Department of Applied Psychology, New York University, New York, New York, USA.
Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York, New York, USA.
Dev Psychobiol. 2023 Jul;65(5):e22393. doi: 10.1002/dev.22393.
Maternal stress is known to be an important factor in shaping child development, yet the complex pattern of associations between stress and infant brain development remains understudied. To better understand the nuanced relations between maternal stress and infant neurodevelopment, research investigating longitudinal relations between maternal chronic physiological stress and infant brain function is warranted. In this study, we leveraged longitudinal data to disentangle between- from within-person associations of maternal hair cortisol and frontal electroencephalography (EEG) power at three time points across infancy at 3, 9, and 15 months. We analyzed both aperiodic power spectral density (PSD) slope and traditional periodic frequency band activity. On the within-person level, maternal hair cortisol was associated with a flattening of frontal PSD slope and an increase in relative frontal beta. However, on the between-person level, higher maternal hair cortisol was associated with steeper frontal PSD slope, increased relative frontal theta, and decreased relative frontal beta. The within-person findings may reflect an adaptive neural response to relative shifts in maternal stress levels, while the between-person results demonstrate the potentially detrimental effects of chronically elevated maternal stress. This analysis offers a novel, quantitative insight into the relations between maternal physiological stress and infant cortical function.
母体应激被认为是塑造儿童发展的一个重要因素，但应激与婴儿大脑发育之间的复杂关联模式仍研究不足。为了更好地理解母体应激和婴儿神经发育之间的细微关系，有必要研究母体慢性生理应激与婴儿大脑功能之间的纵向关系。在这项研究中，我们利用纵向数据来区分母体头发皮质醇与婴儿期三个时间点（3、9 和 15 个月）的额部脑电图（EEG）功率之间的个体间和个体内关联。我们分析了非周期性功率谱密度（PSD）斜率和传统周期性频带活动。在个体内水平上，母体头发皮质醇与额 PSD 斜率变平以及额相对β增加有关。然而，在个体间水平上，较高的母体头发皮质醇与额 PSD 斜率变陡、额相对θ增加和额相对β减少有关。个体内的发现可能反映了母体应激水平相对变化的适应性神经反应，而个体间的结果则表明慢性高母体应激的潜在有害影响。这项分析为母体生理应激与婴儿皮质功能之间的关系提供了新颖的、定量的见解。
