Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2023 Apr 15;44(6):2380-2394. doi: 10.1002/hbm.26216. Epub 2023 Jan 24.
Prenatal depressive symptoms are linked to negative child behavioral and cognitive outcomes and predict later psychopathology in adolescent children. Prior work links prenatal depressive symptoms to child brain structure in regions like the amygdala; however, the relationship between symptoms and the development of brain structure over time remains unclear. We measured maternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy and acquired longitudinal T1-weighted and diffusion imaging data in children (n = 111; 60 females) between 2.6 and 8 years of age. Controlling for postnatal symptoms, we used linear mixed effects models to test relationships between prenatal depressive symptoms and age-related changes in (i) amygdala and hippocampal volume and (ii) structural properties of the limbic and default-mode networks using graph theory. Higher prenatal depressive symptoms in the second trimester were associated with more curvilinear trajectories of left amygdala volume changes. Higher prenatal depressive symptoms in the third trimester were associated with slower age-related changes in limbic global efficiency and average node degree across childhood. Our work provides evidence that moderate symptoms of prenatal depression in a low sociodemographic risk sample are associated with structural brain development in regions and networks implicated in emotion processing.
产前抑郁症状与儿童行为和认知结果呈负相关，并可预测青少年期的精神病理学。先前的研究将产前抑郁症状与杏仁核等大脑区域的儿童脑结构联系起来；然而，症状与大脑结构随时间发展的关系仍不清楚。我们在妊娠期间测量了产妇的抑郁症状，并在儿童（n=111；60 名女性）2.6 至 8 岁期间获得了纵向 T1 加权和弥散成像数据。在控制了产后症状后，我们使用线性混合效应模型来测试产前抑郁症状与（i）杏仁核和海马体积以及（ii）使用图论的边缘和默认模式网络的结构特性随年龄变化的关系。妊娠中期较高的产前抑郁症状与左杏仁核体积变化的更曲线轨迹相关。妊娠晚期较高的产前抑郁症状与儿童期边缘网络整体效率和平均节点度的年龄相关变化较慢相关。我们的研究结果提供了证据，表明低社会经济风险样本中中度产前抑郁症状与情绪处理相关的大脑区域和网络的结构脑发育有关。
