Archival ReportPrepartum and Postpartum Maternal Depressive Symptoms Are Related to Children’s Brain Structure in Preschool
Section snippets
Participants
Participants were 52 women recruited during pregnancy and the children (32 male/20 female) from those pregnancies. Women and children were recruited from an ongoing, prospective study examining maternal nutrition, mental health, and offspring outcomes (32). Table 1 summarizes characteristics of the women and children, including maternal age at child’s birth, maternal postsecondary education (used as a proxy for socioeconomic status), breastfeeding status at 3 months postpartum, and child’s
Maternal Depressive Symptoms and Cortical Thickness
Cortical thickness in two right hemisphere areas was negatively correlated with second trimester maternal depressive symptoms, controlling for child’s age, sex, gestational age, and weight at birth and maternal postsecondary education (Figure 1, Figure 2). One region was located in the right inferior frontal area, including much of the pars opercularis and pars triangularis, and small sections of the precentral and rostral middle frontal areas (r = −.71, p < .001); the other area was located in
Discussion
We report here, for the first time in preschool children, associations between maternal prenatal and postnatal depressive symptoms and white and gray matter brain structure. The thinner cortex and lower diffusivity we observed suggest altered brain development in children exposed to higher levels of maternal depressive symptoms. During childhood, the cortex thins (22, 38) and white matter diffusivity decreases (23, 39) as part of normal maturation processes, including synaptic pruning (40) and
Acknowledgments and Disclosures
This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) (funding Grant Nos. IHD-134090 and MOP-136797), Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (Grant No. 5R21ES021295-03).
We thank the other members of the Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition study team: Catherine J. Field, Rhonda C. Bell, Francois P. Bernier, Marja Cantell, Linda M. Casey, Misha Eliasziw, Anna Farmer, Lisa Gagnon, Laki Goodewardene, David W.
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