Several signaling pathways can be induced by stress (depends on type of stress, chronic stress, child abuse, trauma, emotional stress etc.) which can cause the cognitive impairments. HPA (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal) axis is the main target for chronic stress related signaling pathways experiments. Chronic stress increase the level of cortisol level which has neurotoxic properties and causes a significant damage to the neurons. Glucocorticoid receptors (GR) mediated signaling pathways plays an important role in managing the cortisol level. It has been found that chronic stress down regulate the GR mRNA which induce depressive like behavior and significantly affect the cognitive dysfunction. GR signaling also mediated by extracellular signal regulated kinase (ERK) and mitogen activated protein (MAP) kinase which can be rescue by antidepressant drugs such as imiprimine. At neural circuit level cortico hippocampal neural circuit connectivity is been found important in memory dysfunction (a trait of cognitive impairment) mediated by D1 receptor mediated signaling. Please see the related article below

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v10/n6/abs/nrn2648.html

Dear Sunil Kumar,

              Thank you for your great suggestion. is there any specific pathway which targets maternal psychological stress induced alteration in the behavior and learning and memory 

http://www.pnas.org/content/112/22/6828.full