Prenatal Maternal Depression, Anxiety May Alter Early Brain Development

Depression and anxiety during the third trimester of pregnancy may affect early brain development, reports astudy published today inJAMA Pediatrics. The study suggests that the intensity of maternal depressive and/or anxious symptoms influences the density of the infants ’ white matter—bundles of nerve fibers that connect various brain regions.“Maternal depression and anxiety are known to adversely affect child behavioral and emotional outcomes,” wrote Douglas Dean III, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues. “[O]ur findings show that neural pathways may differ in these children as well.”Dean and colleagues enrolled 149 mother-infant pairs for this neuroimaging study. The pairs were part of an ongoing clinical study examining the association between early-life experience and infant brain development. As part of this study, the mothers completed depression and anxiety questionnaires at weeks 28 and 35 of pregnancy. The investigators later took MRI scans of sleeping infants at age one month. Not all infants slept through the entire scan, so the final analysis included 101 infants (53 male, 48 female).The investigators found a sex-specific connection between the mother ’s depression and anxiety scores and infants’ white matter composition. In female infants, higher maternal depression/anxiety scores were associated with lower white matter density (which reflects fewer, less tightly packed nerve fibers) in frontal brain regions. In boys, howe...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: brain development Douglas C. Dean III JAMA Pediatrics maternal anxiety maternal depression newborn white matter Source Type: research