Maternal psychosocial stress during pregnancy can impact the developing fetal brain and influence offspring mental health. In this context, animal studies have identified the hippocampus and amygdala as key brain regions of interest, however, evidence in humans is sparse. We, therefore, examined the associations between maternal prenatal psychosocial stress, newborn hippocampal and amygdala volumes, and child social-emotional development.
In a sample of 86 mother-child dyads, maternal perceived stress was assessed serially in early, mid and late pregnancy. Following birth, newborn (aged 5–64 postnatal days, mean: 25.8 ± 12.9) hippocampal and amygdala volume was assessed using structural magnetic resonance imaging. Infant social-emotional developmental milestones were assessed at 6- and 12-months age using the Bayley-III.
After adjusting for covariates, maternal perceived stress during pregnancy was inversely associated with newborn left hippocampal volume (
β
= −0.26, p = .019), but not with right hippocampal (
β
= −0.170,
p
= .121) or bilateral amygdala volumes (
p
s > .5). Furthermore, newborn left hippocampal volume was positively associated with infant social-emotional development across the first year of postnatal life (B = 0.01, p = .011). Maternal perceived stress was indirectly associated with infant social-emotional development via newborn left hippocampal volume (B = −0.34, 95% CI
BC
[-0.97, −0.01]), suggesting mediation.
This study provides prospective evidence in humans linking maternal psychosocial stress in pregnancy with newborn hippocampal volume and subsequent infant social-emotional development across the first year of life. These findings highlight the importance of maternal psychosocial state during pregnancy as a target amenable to interventions to prevent or attenuate its potentially unfavorable neural and behavioral consequences in the offspring.
Background: Sense of coherence is a personal resource known to be low in eating disorders. We wanted to know if sense of coherence is still correlated to anorexia symptoms several years after initial hospitalisation for anorexia.Methods: 86 former female patients diagnosed with anorexia were contacted 5-11 years after hospitalisation in a German hospital; 68 of 149 women (46%) could be contacted and agreed to participate in a survey with the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI-2) and the Sense of Coherence Questionnaire (SOC-13).Results: 17.6% of participants stated that they suffered from an eating disorder currently, with 7.4% having anorexia nervosa. Mean EDI-2 subscales (except for the bulimia sub-scale) were in the <40th percentile for women with anorexia. Sense of coherence was low (percentile rank 20). All EDI-2 subscales correlated negatively with the SOC-13 score (p<0.01).Conclusions: The sense of coherence is low in long-term follow up of anorexia nervosa and is correlated with on-going anorexia symptoms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.