University of Denver.
University of California-Irvine.
Child Dev. 2020 Mar;91(2):e432-e450. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13252. Epub 2019 May 9.
Prenatal maternal stress predicts subsequent elevations in youth depressive symptoms, but the neural processes associated with these links are unclear. This study evaluated whether prenatal maternal stress is associated with child brain development, and adolescent depressive symptoms using a prospective design with 74 mother child pairs (40 boys). Maternal stress was assessed during pregnancy, child cortical thickness at age 7, and depressive symptoms at age 12. Prenatal maternal stress was associated with less cortical thickness primarily in frontal and temporal regions and with elevated depressive symptoms; child cortical thickness additionally correlated with adolescent depressive symptoms. The observed associations are consistent with the possibility that cortical thickness in superior frontal regions links associations between prenatal maternal stress and adolescent depressive symptoms.
产前母亲压力可预测随后青少年抑郁症状的升高，但与这些关联相关的神经过程尚不清楚。本研究采用前瞻性设计，对 74 对母婴（40 名男孩）进行了研究，评估了产前母亲压力是否与儿童大脑发育和青少年抑郁症状有关。在怀孕期间评估了母亲的压力，在 7 岁时评估了儿童的皮质厚度，在 12 岁时评估了抑郁症状。产前母亲压力与额叶和颞叶区域的皮质厚度减少有关，与抑郁症状升高有关；儿童皮质厚度与青少年抑郁症状进一步相关。观察到的关联与以下可能性一致，即前额区域的皮质厚度将产前母亲压力与青少年抑郁症状之间的关联联系起来。
