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Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery

Studies reporting significant associations between maternal prenatal stress and child outcomes are frequently confounded by correlates of prenatal stress that influence the postnatal rearing environment. The major objective of this study is to identify whether maternal prenatal stress is associated...

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Autores principales: Thomason, Moriah E., Hect, Jasmine L., Waller, Rebecca, Curtin, Paul
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer International Publishing 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8357800/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34188185
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01066-7
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author Thomason, Moriah E.
Hect, Jasmine L.
Waller, Rebecca
Curtin, Paul
author_facet Thomason, Moriah E.
Hect, Jasmine L.
Waller, Rebecca
Curtin, Paul
author_sort Thomason, Moriah E.
collection PubMed
description Studies reporting significant associations between maternal prenatal stress and child outcomes are frequently confounded by correlates of prenatal stress that influence the postnatal rearing environment. The major objective of this study is to identify whether maternal prenatal stress is associated with variation in human brain functional connectivity prior to birth. We utilized fetal fMRI in 118 fetuses [48 female; mean age 32.9 weeks (SD = 3.87)] to evaluate this association and further addressed whether fetal neural differences were related to maternal health behaviors, social support, or birth outcomes. Community detection was used to empirically define networks and enrichment was used to isolate differential within- or between-network connectivity effects. Significance for χ(2) enrichment was determined by randomly permuting the subject pairing of fetal brain connectivity and maternal stress values 10,000 times. Mixtures modelling was used to test whether fetal neural differences were related to maternal health behaviors, social support, or birth outcomes. Increased maternal prenatal negative affect/stress was associated with alterations in fetal frontoparietal, striatal, and temporoparietal connectivity (β = 0.82, p < 0.001). Follow-up analysis demonstrated that these associations were stronger in women with better health behaviors, more positive interpersonal support, and lower overall stress (β = 0.16, p = 0.02). Additionally, magnitude of stress-related differences in neural connectivity was marginally correlated with younger gestational age at delivery (β = −0.18, p = 0.05). This is the first evidence that negative affect/stress during pregnancy is reflected in functional network differences in the human brain in utero, and also provides information about how positive interpersonal and health behaviors could mitigate prenatal brain programming.
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spelling pubmed-83578002021-08-30 Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery Thomason, Moriah E. Hect, Jasmine L. Waller, Rebecca Curtin, Paul Neuropsychopharmacology Article Studies reporting significant associations between maternal prenatal stress and child outcomes are frequently confounded by correlates of prenatal stress that influence the postnatal rearing environment. The major objective of this study is to identify whether maternal prenatal stress is associated with variation in human brain functional connectivity prior to birth. We utilized fetal fMRI in 118 fetuses [48 female; mean age 32.9 weeks (SD = 3.87)] to evaluate this association and further addressed whether fetal neural differences were related to maternal health behaviors, social support, or birth outcomes. Community detection was used to empirically define networks and enrichment was used to isolate differential within- or between-network connectivity effects. Significance for χ(2) enrichment was determined by randomly permuting the subject pairing of fetal brain connectivity and maternal stress values 10,000 times. Mixtures modelling was used to test whether fetal neural differences were related to maternal health behaviors, social support, or birth outcomes. Increased maternal prenatal negative affect/stress was associated with alterations in fetal frontoparietal, striatal, and temporoparietal connectivity (β = 0.82, p < 0.001). Follow-up analysis demonstrated that these associations were stronger in women with better health behaviors, more positive interpersonal support, and lower overall stress (β = 0.16, p = 0.02). Additionally, magnitude of stress-related differences in neural connectivity was marginally correlated with younger gestational age at delivery (β = −0.18, p = 0.05). This is the first evidence that negative affect/stress during pregnancy is reflected in functional network differences in the human brain in utero, and also provides information about how positive interpersonal and health behaviors could mitigate prenatal brain programming. Springer International Publishing 2021-06-29 2021-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8357800/ /pubmed/34188185 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01066-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Thomason, Moriah E.
Hect, Jasmine L.
Waller, Rebecca
Curtin, Paul
Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery
title Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery
title_full Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery
title_fullStr Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery
title_full_unstemmed Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery
title_short Interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery
title_sort interactive relations between maternal prenatal stress, fetal brain connectivity, and gestational age at delivery
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8357800/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34188185
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41386-021-01066-7
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