81. Nucleus Accumbens Volume Mediates the Association Between Prenatal Adversity and Attention Problems in Youth

The prenatal environment plays an important and enduring role in children ’s development. Exposure to adversity during the prenatal period is associated with children’s cognitive and emotional difficulties; the neurobiological pathways underlying these associations, however, are not yet clear. Given the central role of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) in reward processing , we examined here whether NAcc volume at age six mediates the relation between prenatal adversity and subsequent attention problems in offspring.
Source: Biological Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Source Type: research