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Maternal stress during pregnancy alters fetal cortico-cerebellar connectivity in utero and increases child sleep problems after birth
Open accessAbstract
Child sleep disorders are increasingly prevalent and understanding early predictors of sleep problems, starting in utero, may meaningfully guide future prevention efforts. Here, we investigated whether prenatal exposure to maternal psychological stress is associated with increased sleep problems in toddlers. We also examined whether fetal brain connectivity has direct or indirect influence on this putative association. Pregnant women underwent fetal resting-state functional connectivity MRI and completed questionnaires on stress, worry, and negative affect. At 3-year follow-up, 64 mothers reported on child sleep problems, and in the subset that have reached 5-year follow-up, actigraphy data (N = 25) has also been obtained. We observe that higher maternal prenatal stress is associated with increased toddler sleep concerns, with actigraphy sleep metrics, and with decreased fetal cerebellar-insular connectivity. Specific mediating effects were not identified for the fetal brain regions examined. The search for underlying mechanisms of the link between maternal prenatal stress and child sleep problems should be continued and extended to other brain areas.
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Connectivity changes do not seem to mediate the maternal stress-behavior relationship.
“although connectivity changes do not seem to mediate the maternal stress-behavior relationship [106].”
From Brain structural and functional outcomes in the offspring of women experiencing psychological distress during pregnancy (2024) · cites this paper as [106]
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References 88 · Cited by 76
Research works printed but not linked: 4
- Spielberger, C. D. State-Trait Anxiety Inventory: A Comprehensive Bibliography (Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, 1984).
- Achenbach, T. M. & Rescorla, L. A. Manual for the ASEBA School-Age Forms & Profiles: An Integrated System of Mult-informant Assessment (University of Vermont, Research Center for Children, Youth & Families, Burlington, 2001).
- van Heuvel, M. I. et al. Hubs in the human fetal brain network. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. 30, 108–115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2018.02.001 (2018). · DOI · Paper page
- Thomason, M. E. et al. Intrinsic functional brain architecture derived from graph theoretical analysis in the human fetus. PLoS ONE 9, 10. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0094423 (2014). · DOI · Paper page
Metadata
- Authors
- van den Heuvel, M. I., Hect, J. L., Smarr, B. L., Qawasmeh, T., Kriegsfeld, L. J., Barcelona, J., Hijazi, K. E., & Thomason, M. E.
- Affiliations
- Wayne State University (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- NYU Langone Health (US)
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2021-01-26
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 2228-2228
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7838320
- OpenAlex
- W3121208659
- Cited by
- 76
- References
- 88
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 7
- FWCI
- 14.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research portal (Tilburg University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Veni.VI.191G.025)
- National Institutes of Health (MH110793)
- Brain Research Foundation
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Keywords
- prenatal stress, cortico-cerebellar connectivity, child sleep problems, toddler sleep, actigraphy, mediating effect
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Anxiety, Brain, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Mothers, Pregnancy, Surveys and Questionnaires, Sleep Wake Disorders, Stress, Psychological, Young Adult
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