Restraint stress of pregnant dams is employed as an animal model of schizophrenia. Lending support to the applicability of rodent prenatal stress for studying schizophrenia, multiple studies have found links between epigenetic marks in the postmortem brain of individuals with schizophrenia and rodents subjected to prenatal stress. For example, individuals with schizophrenia have reduced expression of BDNF, a gene important in development and synaptic plasticity, and altered levels of epigenetic regulators such as TETs and DNMTs (Dong et al., 2012; Gavin et al., 2012; Jindal et al., 2010; Ruzicka et al., 2007). Adult mice subjected to prenatal stress were found to have increased levels of Dnmt1 and Tet1 in the frontal cortex and hippocampus coinciding with reduced Bdnf expression. Reduced Bdnf expression corresponded with increased methylation and hydroxymethylation of the Bdnf gene (Dong et al., 2015). These same animals showed locomotor hyperactivity and decreased social interaction, both of which are behavioral indices of schizophrenia (Amann et al., 2010). As evidence for a link between these brain and behavioral implications of stress exposure, a positive correlation was found between social approach
