Tag: parenting

Maternal happiness in pregnancy boosts child brain development, study finds
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A new study in the journal Nature Mental Health explores how a mother’s positive state of mind during pregnancy affects the structure and function of the developing fetal brain by measuring these parameters by 7.5 years of age.

Study: Maternal positive mental health during pregnancy impacts the hippocampus and functional brain networks in children. Image Credit: Dean Drobot / Shutterstock.com

How does the maternal emotional state affect fetal development?

During pregnancy, which is a time of significant physical, mental, and social change, anxiety, depression, and other stress-related mental health disorders are frequently reported. These mental health issues have been associated with a durable and adverse effect on fetal brain development.

For example, previous research has shown that these mental disorders can lead to changes in the growth rate of the fetal hippocampus and a lower density of gray matter in the prefrontal and medial temporal lobes in early childhood. These children may also exhibit altered structure and function of emotion-regulating cortico-limbic networks, which are important for stress management.

At certain stages, these changes appear to be more significant in girls than boys. Notably, it is not necessary that the mother be clinically anxious or depressed for these alterations to manifest.

As a key component of mental health, positive maternal emotions like happiness can affect multiple outcomes, including maternal-infant bonding, parenting approaches, and child development. Furthermore, maternal happiness during pregnancy also impacts the long-term health of both the mother and child; however, it remains unclear how positive maternal emotions affect prenatal development.

About the study

The current study used data from the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Health Outcomes (GUSTO) cohort. Both structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) were performed on children to explore the association of maternal happiness during pregnancy with brain development.

The researchers developed their own tool to measure positive maternal mental health during pregnancy. This was based on a mental health questionnaire given to pregnant women at 26-28 weeks.

What did the study show?

At 7.5 years of age, children are experiencing a vital phase of development during which the brain shifts towards different patterns of activity and cognitive processes develop in new ways. As a result, this period was chosen as the focus of the study.

Brain areas involved in perceiving and regulating emotions include the hippocampus and amygdala, as well as various functional networks like the visual networks, default mode network (DMN), and functional network. These regions of the brain have also been directly correlated with how the mother cares for the child.

A composite measure from multiple mental health scales was used for assessing positive maternal emotions during pregnancy. Other potential contributing factors such as socioeconomic status, stress levels, family and friend relationships, and death of close relatives in the two years before and after pregnancy were also recorded to determine a socio-environmental adversity factor. Maternal parenting stress was also assessed when the child was six years of age.

Interestingly, girls born to mothers who reported feeling happy during pregnancy had larger hippocampus volumes, whereas both boys and girls born to happy mothers exhibited altered functional connectivity of multiple networks.

When categorized by task-negative and task-positive networks, reduced connectivity between task-negative networks was observed among girls born to mothers with increased positive emotions during pregnancy. Conversely, increased connectivity between task-positive networks was associated with greater maternal happiness during pregnancy.

Since these findings were absent when explored in relation to depression or anxiety in the mother during pregnancy, the observed changes in functional connectivity may occur specifically with greater maternal positive emotion in pregnancy. This may indicate that maternal happiness transmits to the developing child’s brain through neural changes.

What are the implications?

The study findings suggest that feeling happy during pregnancy not only reduces the risk of psychiatric illness in the mother but also potentially acts as a protective factor for fetal brain development.

Previous studies have shown that anxious and stressed mothers are more likely to have children with hippocampal changes, which may affect the developing brain and lead to impaired stress responses in the future. By encouraging mothers to have positive emotions during pregnancy, hippocampal development in the offspring may be promoted, with better structure and functional networks during the time when children typically begin to attend school.

Importantly, better hippocampal development is associated with greater childhood resilience, thus serving as an early marker for psychological vulnerability and greater potential for behavioral and emotional problems when encountering stressful circumstances. However, the period of fetal development at which maternal positive emotions occur may modify the impact.

Future studies are needed to establish and extend these findings, especially to understand the neural basis of prenatal-maternal interactions during psychoneurological development. These studies could support the development of preventive strategies to help mothers feel happy during pregnancy and ultimately promote the mental health of their children.
Journal reference:

Qiu, A., Shen, C., Lopez-Vicente, M., et al. (2024). Maternal positive mental health during pregnancy impacts the hippocampus and functional brain networks in children. Nature Mental Health. doi:10.1038/s44220-024-00202-8.
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February 5, 2024
Genetic link found to emotional sensitivity in stressful situations
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In a recent study published in Scientific Reports, researchers assess how genetic variation in a cluster of differentiation 38 (CD38) is associated with increased personal distress in an emotionally evocative situation.

Study: CD38 genetic variation is associated with increased personal distress to an emotional stimulus. Image Credit: Dragana Gordic / Shutterstock.com

CD38 and oxytocin

Oxytocin is a peptide neurohormone that is actively involved in social behavior, including parent-infant bonding, particularly in the immediate period following childbirth, romantic relationships, and group dynamics. Oxytocin-related genetic variants have been associated with various effects on empathy, brain activation during emotion recognition tasks, responses to trauma, and the risk of autism.

Recently, researchers have identified that A allele carriers of the CD38 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs3796863 had higher plasma oxytocin levels, a more sensitive approach to parenting, and stronger empathic responses. However, other studies have reported that students with the AA genotype of the CD38 SNP reported higher levels of suicide ideation, depressive symptoms, and greater alienation from parents and peers.

These conflicting findings have led some researchers to theorize that A carriers may be more socially sensitive, which, as a result, could lead to a stronger negative emotional response during stressful situations. Despite this concept, no study to date has assessed the impact of the CD38 genotype on negative reactivity to an emotionally stressful situation.

About the study

For the present study, researchers recruited Canadian university students 18 years of age and older with no health issues expected to influence hormone levels. All study participants were shown a three-minute video depicting a father narrating the story of his child’s terminal cancer.

After the video, study participants completed a questionnaire seeking to assess their emotional response to 12 emotions, six of which involved feelings of empathic concern, whereas the remaining six included feelings of personal distress. These responses were rated on a scale from one to five, with higher scores indicating higher endorsement of the emotional response.

Two Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) subscales, including the personal distress and empathic concern subscales, were used to explore whether the CD38 genotype related to dispositional measures of emotional responses. Participants completed the IRI approximately 10 minutes after watching the emotional video, during which they rated their responses on a five-point Likert scale, with a higher score indicating increased empathy.

Study findings

A total of 171 students participated in the current study, 24, 77, and 70 of whom had the AA, AC, and CC genotypes of the CD38 SNP, respectively.

The average distress-related response ratings were higher for females than males and AA/AC than CC genotypes, thus suggesting that sex and CD38 genotype affected these responses but not their interaction. Females also scored higher than males on empathy-related responses; however, these scores were not significantly different among the different genotypes.

On both IRI subscales, sex had a significant effect, with females scoring higher than males. However, the IRI subscale results were not significantly different between the CD38 genotypes.

When seeing someone in distress, people with the A allele reported insignificant levels of empathy, a well-recognized response of care, but markedly higher levels of personal distress, a self-focused emotional reaction.

An empathy-inducing situation may elicit these two responses simultaneously; however, they can have different consequences. For example, while empathy promotes helping behavior to relieve the distress of the individual in need, a person in distress may have the urge to alleviate their own distress rather than offer help to the other person in need of help.

Conclusions

The current study provides preliminary evidence that genetic variation in CD38 influences social-emotional sensitivity. To this end, A allele carriers were more vulnerable to distress-related emotions in response to a negative social stressor.

The study findings may reconcile paradoxical findings that CD38 A allele carriers are more empathetic despite exhibiting worse interpersonal outcomes. Despite having greater empathy, their high levels of personal distress may prevent appropriate social support from being provided when involved in social conflict.

This data on oxytocin-related genetic variants could be used to predict individuals for whom the buffer against stress and anxiety in response to challenging interpersonal situations is weaker. Given their inability to regulate their negative emotions, these individuals should receive adequate and timely support.

Future studies, especially in interpersonal contexts, need to use more natural empathy paradigms to assess the role of CD38 in emotional regulation.
Journal reference:

Procyshyn, T. L., Leclerc Bédard, L., Crespi, B. J., & Bartz, J. A. (2024). CD38 genetic variation is associated with increased personal distress to an emotional stimulus. Scientific Reports 14(1); 1-7. doi:10.1038/s41598-024-53081-5
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February 4, 2024
Maternal happiness during pregnancy linked to child’s brain development
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In a recent study published in the journal Nature Mental Health, researchers explored the relationship between maternal mental health and children’s brain development. Their results contribute to the medical understanding of the importance of the intrauterine environment and suggest that in addition to positive outcomes for the mother, emotional well-being during pregnancy can be an important protective factor for brain development in children.

Study: Maternal positive mental health during pregnancy impacts the hippocampus and functional brain networks in children. Image Credit: Prostock-studio / Shutterstock

Background

Research suggests that depression, anxiety, and stress during pregnancy can have enduring adverse effects on the child’s brain development. Maternal anxiety and depression have been found to affect gray matter density in the medial temporal and prefrontal cortex as well as hippocampal growth.

Maternal health factors can also modify the cortico-limbic system, which helps regulate stress responses and emotional states. These widespread effects have been observed to be more prominent in female children between birth and early childhood. These findings highlight the need to address prenatal mental health to promote brain development in children.

However, emotional well-being is not merely the absence of mental illness but also includes the experience of positive emotions and mental affect. While the effect of positive maternal emotions on parenting behavior, mother-infant bonding, long-term mental health, and child development has been studied, its impacts on brain development have not been explored.

About the study

The study followed a longitudinal prospective birth cohort design to investigate the relationship between maternal well-being and brain development in 7.5-year-old children using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This age was chosen because it is a key neurodevelopmental period when significant cognitive processes and brain changes occur.

Participants in the study included pregnant Asian (Malay, Indian, or Chinese) women in their first trimester who were recruited while they antenatal care at an ultrasound scan clinic in Singapore. For the MRI, children were included if they had a gestational age of more than 30 weeks and a birth weight of more than 2 kg to avoid the confounding effects of birth complications.

The authors hypothesized that positive emotions during pregnancy would be associated with significant differences in brain structures, such as the amygdala and hippocampus as well as functional networks, such as the default mode and visual networks. The mental health of the mothers was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.

Additionally, the survey included questions on socioeconomic status, relationships with friends and family, life stress, and other topics related to prenatal health and well-being. This information was used to construct an overall socio-environmental adversity factor and scores for four risk domains – personal, interpersonal, socioeconomic, and life stress.

Findings

The sample of participants who underwent the structural MRI included 381 children, of whom 369 also underwent the functional MRI procedure. After controlling for the overall socio-environmental adversity factor and the child’s age during the MRI, researchers found that more positive maternal emotions during the prenatal period were associated with a larger bilateral hippocampal volume in female children but not males. However, maternal positive emotions were not seen to be associated with cortical thickness or volumes of the thalamus, amygdala, lateral ventricles, or basal ganglia.

In terms of functional networks, more maternal positive emotions were associated with higher functional connectivity between the right frontoparietal and visual association networks, salience and thalamo-hippocampal networks, and posterior default mode and attention networks. Notably, these results were significant after controlling for child sex and age as well as postnatal parenting stress and other risk factors. These outcomes were not, however, associated with anxiety or depressive symptoms during pregnancy.

Conclusions

These findings indicate that there may be a neural basis through which positive emotions during pregnancy are transmitted from the mother to her offspring during the early development of the brain. Of the significantly associated outcomes, only the change in the bilateral hippocampi differed between male and female children. This research implies that ensuring mothers’ mental health could lead to sustained benefits for offspring in terms of neural development.

While the study has several strengths and offers novel insights, the authors acknowledged some limitations. While brain development was assessed through neuroimaging, data on maternal mood and well-being were collected through subjective reports and may, therefore, be subject to biases related to recall and social desirability. Self-reports of positive emotions may not be an adequate proxy for psychological well-being, a complex and multifaceted issue. The study participants were all Asian, leading to a lack of generalizability to other populations.

Future studies can build on these findings by including individuals of other races and factoring in positive emotions during other stages (such as during the postnatal period). This work adds to a growing body of literature showing the transgenerational nature of mental health outcomes and the importance of ensuring that mothers and children are not just healthy but happy, too.
Journal reference:

Maternal positive mental health during pregnancy impacts the hippocampus and functional brain networks in children. Qui, A., Shen, C., López-Vicente, M., Szekely, E., Chong, Y., White, T., Wazana, A. Nature Mental Health (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s44220-024-00202-8, https://www.nature.com/articles/s44220-024-00202-8
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January 31, 2024