Mother-Infant Interaction and Maternal Postnatal Psychological Distress Associate with Child's Social-Emotional Development During Early Childhood: A FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

We studied the effects of mother-infant interaction and maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress on children's social-emotional problems and competences, as well as whether interaction quality moderates the association between distress and children's outcomes. Maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress were measured using the SCL and EPDS questionnaires, whereas mother-infant interaction was measured when the child was 8 months old using the EA Scales. Children's social-emotional development was measured using the BITSEA questionnaire at 2 years old and using the SDQ questionnaire at 4 years old, where higher maternal structuring was associated with fewer social-emotional problems in children and higher maternal sensitivity was associated with greater social-emotional competence in children at 2 years old. Further, higher postnatal distress was found associated with greater social-emotional problems at 2 years old, though neither these effects nor moderating effects at 4 years old were observed after multiple-comparison corrections. Our findings support direct associations of both mother-infant interaction and maternal postnatal psychological distress with children's social-emotional development during toddlerhood.

Negative associations between maternal prenatal hair cortisol and child socioemotional problems

Maternal prenatal distress can participate in the programming of offspring development, in which exposure to altered maternal long-term cortisol levels as measured by hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) may contribute. Yet, studies investigating whether and how maternal prenatal HCC associates with problems in child socioemotional development are scarce. Furthermore, questions remain regarding the timing and potential sex-specificity of fetal exposure to altered cortisol levels and whether there are interactions with maternal prenatal distress, such as depressive symptoms. The subjects were drawn from those FinnBrain Birth Cohort families that had maternal reports of child socioemotional problems (the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment [BITSEA] at 2 years and/or the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire [SDQ] at 5 years) as follows: HCC1 population: maternal mid-pregnancy HCC measured at gestational week 24 with 5 cm segments to depict cortisol levels from the previous five months (n = 321); and HCC2 population: end-of-pregnancy HCC measured 1-3 days after childbirth (5 cm segment; n = 121). Stepwise regression models were utilized in the main analyses and a sensitivity analysis was performed to detect potential biases. Negative associations were observed between maternal HCC2 and child BITSEA Total Problems at 2 years but not with SDQ Total difficulties at 5 years, and neither problem score was associated with HCC1. In descriptive analyses, HCC2 was negatively associated with Internalizing problems at 2 years and SDQ Emotional problems at 5 years. A negative association was observed among 5-year-old girls between maternal HCC1 and SDQ Total Difficulties and the subscales of Conduct and Hyperactivity/inattentive problems. When interactions were also considered, inverse associations between HCC2 and BITSEA Internalizing and Dysregulation Problems were observed in subjects with elevated prenatal depressive symptoms. It was somewhat surprising that only negative associations were observed between maternal HCC and child socioemotional problems. However, there are previous observations of elevated end-of-pregnancy cortisol levels associating with better developmental outcomes. The magnitudes of the observed associations were, as expected, mainly modest. Future studies with a focus on the individual changes of maternal cortisol levels throughout pregnancy as well as studies assessing both maternal and child HPA axis functioning together with child socioemotional development are indicated.

Trajectories of maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms and child's socio-emotional outcome during early childhood

Maternal symptoms of depression and anxiety during pregnancy and early postnatal years are suggested to impose differential negative effects on child's socio-emotional development depending on the characteristics of the symptoms, such as timing, intensity, and persistence. The aim of this study was to identify trajectories of maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms from pregnancy until 2 years postpartum and to examine their relationship with child socio-emotional problems and competence at 2 and 5 years of age. The sample included 1208 mother-infant dyads from FinnBrain Birth Cohort study. Latent growth mixture modelling (LGMM) was utilized to model the trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms, measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), and general anxiety, measured with Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) at 14, 24, and 34 weeks' gestation (gw) and at 3, 6 and 24 months postpartum. Maternal depression was also assessed at 12 months. Child socio-emotional problems and competence were evaluated using the Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) at 2 years and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) at 5 years. Relevant background factors and maternal concurrent symptomatology were controlled for. The trajectories of maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were associated negatively with differential aspects of child long term socio-emotional outcomes from early toddlerhood to preschool years. The trajectories of depressive symptoms and high-level persistent symptoms that continued from pregnancy to two years of child age had the strongest negative association with child outcomes. This highlights the importance of identifying and treating maternal symptomatology, especially that of depression, as early as possible.

Two-Year Trajectories of Dental Anxiety in Parents and Their Association with Parents' and Children's Oral Healthcare Procedures in FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

We aimed to identify parents' dental anxiety trajectories and the association of the trajectories with the number of parents' and their children's oral healthcare procedures in the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Dental anxiety was measured with the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale at gestational weeks (gw) 14 and 34, as well as 3 and 24 months (mo) after childbirth. Oral healthcare procedures from gw14 to 24 mo were obtained from the national patient data register and categorized as preventive and treatment. Trajectories were identified with latent growth mixture modelling for 2068 fathers and 3201 mothers. Associations between trajectories and procedures adjusted for education were analyzed using unordered multinomial logit models. Fathers' trajectories were stable low (80.1%), stable high (3.4%), stable moderate (11.0%), moderate increasing (3.9%) and high decreasing (1.6%). Mothers' trajectories were stable low (80.7%), stable high (11.2%), moderate increasing (5.3%) and high decreasing (2.8%). Mothers with decreasing dental anxiety had a higher number of preventive and treatment procedures. Fathers with decreasing dental anxiety had a higher number of preventive and treatment procedures, while fathers with increasing dental anxiety had fewer procedures. Children of mothers with stable low dental anxiety had higher number of preventive procedures. There seems to be a two-way association between dental anxiety trajectories and oral healthcare procedures.

Lower maternal emotional availability is related to increased attention toward fearful faces during infancy

It has been suggested that infants' age-typical attention biases for faces and facial expressions have an inherent connection with the parent-infant interaction. However, only a few previous studies have addressed this topic. To investigate the association between maternal caregiving behaviors and an infant's attention for emotional faces, 149 mother-infant dyads were assessed when the infants were 8 months. Caregiving behaviors were observed during free-play interactions and coded using the Emotional Availability Scales. The composite score of four parental dimensions, that are sensitivity, structuring, non-intrusiveness, and non-hostility, was used in the analyses. Attention disengagement from faces was measured using eye tracking and face-distractor paradigm with neutral, happy, and fearful faces and scrambled-face control pictures as stimuli. The main finding was that lower maternal emotional availability was related to an infant's higher attention to fearful faces (p = .042), when infant sex and maternal age, education, and concurrent depressive and anxiety symptoms were controlled. This finding indicates that low maternal emotional availability may sensitize infants' emotion processing system for the signals of fear at least during this specific age around 8 months. The significance of the increased attention toward fearful faces during infancy is an important topic for future research.

Sense of coherence, its components and depressive and anxiety symptoms in expecting women and their partners - A FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

OBJECTIVE

Expecting mothers with high sense of coherence (SOC) exhibit improved physical, emotional, and childbearing health. However, the dimensions of SOC and the factor structure of the SOC-13 scale during prenatal period is slightly known. Especially the differences in experiencing SOC and its components (comprehensibility, manageability, meaningfulness) among both expecting parents (mothers and fathers) is poorly understood. The association between SOC and mood disorder symptoms (depression and anxiety) during pregnancy is scarcely studied.

METHODS

The structure of the SOC-13 scale, differences in SOC experiences, and the associations between SOC and depressive and anxiety symptoms were studied in a sample of 2784 pregnant women (mothers) and 1661 men/partners (fathers) belonging to the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Self-reports (SOC-13, EPDS, SCL-90: ANX) from gestational week 24 were used. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and invariance testing was carried out to investigate the factorial structure of SOC-13 among both groups (mothers and fathers). Group comparisons were used to study differences in the level of SOC among mothers vs. fathers, low vs. high depression and anxiety subgroups, and multiparous vs. nulliparous mothers.

RESULTS

A two-factor model for SOC-13 consisting of comprehensibility-manageability and meaningfulness fitted the data best. Mothers reported higher levels of meaningfulness, whereas fathers reported higher levels of comprehensibility-manageability. SOC was significantly higher among fathers vs. mothers, but mothers with depressive symptoms reported higher SOC than fathers with depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

During pregnancy, SOC can be viewed as a two-dimensional (vs. one- or three-dimensional) concept, and mothers and fathers have differences in the components of SOC. Importantly, mothers vs. fathers with depressive symptoms express higher overall SOC indicating that pregnancy may relate to higher than usual SOC especially among women with psychological distress. Understanding how expecting mothers and fathers experience SOC during pregnancy, particularly in relation to depressive symptoms, helps midwives and maternity care providers to focus health promoting support more precisely.

Childhood maltreatment, trait resilience and prenatal distress among expecting mothers and fathers in the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

BACKGROUND

In this study we examined the association between childhood maltreatment exposure (CME) and psychological distress, including symptoms of depression and anxiety, during pregnancy. Additionally, we explored the potential moderating effect of trait resilience on these associations.

METHODS

The study is part of the ongoing FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. The sample consisted of 3016 mothers and 1934 fathers. The data were collected using self-report questionnaires, including EPDS, SCL-90, CD-RISC-10 and TADS. We conducted ANOVAs and linear logistic regression analyses to examine the associations between depression, anxiety, resilience, and CMEs.

RESULTS

CMEs were associated with increased psychological distress, including depression symptoms and anxiety, and decreased trait resilience among both mothers and fathers. Additionally, trait resilience had a moderating effect on the association between fathers' CMEs and psychological distress, while no significant moderating effect was found among mothers. Furthermore, among both mothers and fathers, higher trait resilience was associated with decreased anxiety and depressive symptoms.

LIMITATIONS

Due to cross-sectionality, it is not possible to establish a causal relationship between CMEs, resilience, and parental distress. Additionally, the study does not provide insights into the underlying factors or processes that contribute to the development of trait resilience.

CONCLUSIONS

Trait resilience may have a positive impact on parents' mental health during pregnancy. This study is the first to investigate the significance of fathers' trait resilience during pregnancy. In clinical settings, it is essential to identify parents with low levels of resilience and provide them with appropriate support, recognizing them as a vulnerable group.

Prenatal and Postnatal Maternal Depressive Symptoms Are Associated With White Matter Integrity in 5-Year-Olds in a Sex-Specific Manner

BACKGROUND

Prenatal and postnatal maternal psychological distress predicts various detrimental consequences on social, behavioral, and cognitive development of offspring, especially in girls. Maturation of white matter (WM) continues from prenatal development into adulthood and is thus susceptible to exposures both before and after birth.

METHODS

WM microstructural features of 130 children (mean age, 5.36 years; range, 5.04-5.79 years; 63 girls) and their association with maternal prenatal and postnatal depressive and anxiety symptoms were investigated with diffusion tensor imaging, tract-based spatial statistics, and regression analyses. Maternal questionnaires were collected during first, second, and third trimesters and at 3, 6, and 12 months postpartum with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) for depressive symptoms and Symptom Checklist-90 for general anxiety. Covariates included child's sex; child's age; maternal prepregnancy body mass index; maternal age; socioeconomic status; and exposures to smoking, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and synthetic glucocorticoids during pregnancy.

RESULTS

Prenatal second-trimester EPDS scores were positively associated with fractional anisotropy in boys (p < .05, 5000 permutations) after controlling for EPDS scores 3 months postpartum. In contrast, postpartum EPDS scores at 3 months correlated negatively with fractional anisotropy (p < .01, 5000 permutations) in widespread areas only in girls after controlling for prenatal second-trimester EPDS scores. Perinatal anxiety was not associated with WM structure.

CONCLUSIONS

These results suggest that prenatal and postnatal maternal psychological distress is associated with brain WM tract developmental alterations in a sex- and timing-dependent manner. Future studies including behavioral data are required to consolidate associative outcomes for these alterations.

Infant gut microbiota and negative and fear reactivity

BACKGROUND

Studies indicate that gut microbiota is related to neurodevelopmental and behavioral outcomes. Accordingly, early gut microbiota composition (GMC) has been linked to child temperament, but research is still scarce. The aim of this study was to examine how early GMC at 2.5 months is associated with child negative and fear reactivity at 8 and 12 months since they are potentially important intermediate phenotypes of later child psychiatric disorders.

METHODS

Our study population was 330 infants enrolled in the longitudinal FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Gut microbiota composition was analyzed using stool sample 16s rRNA sequencing. Negative and fear reactivity were assessed using the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB) at child's age of 8 months (n =150) and the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised Short Form (IBQ-R SF) at child's age of 12 months (n = 276).

CONCLUSIONS

We found a positive association between alpha diversity and reported fear reactivity and differing microbial community composition based on negative reactivity for boys. Isobutyric acid correlated with observed negative reactivity, however, this association attenuated in the linear model. Several genera were associated with the selected infant temperament traits. This study adds to the growing literature on links between infant gut microbiota and temperament informing future mechanistic studies.

Attention biases for emotional facial expressions during a free viewing task increase between 2.5 and 5 years of age

The normative, developmental changes in affect-biased attention during the preschool years are largely unknown. To investigate the attention bias for emotional versus neutral faces, an eye-tracking measurement and free viewing of paired pictures of facial expressions (i.e., happy, fearful, sad, or angry faces) and nonface pictures with neutral faces were conducted with 367 children participating in a Finnish cohort study at the age of 2.5 years and with 477 children at the age of 5 years, 216 of which having follow-up measurements. We found an attention-orienting bias for happy and fearful faces versus neutral faces at both age points. An attention-orienting bias for sad faces emerged between 2.5 and 5 years. In addition, there were significant biases in sustained attention toward happy, fearful, sad, and angry faces versus neutral faces, with a bias in sustained attention for fearful faces being the strongest. All biases in sustained attention increased between 2.5 and 5 years of age. Moderate correlations in saccadic latencies were found between 2.5 and 5 years. In conclusion, attention biases for emotional facial expressions seem to be age-specific and specific for the attentional subcomponent. This implies that future studies on affect-biased attention during the preschool years should use small age ranges and cover multiple subcomponents of attention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Mother-infant interaction and maternal postnatal psychological distress are associated with negative emotional reactivity among infants and toddlers- A FinnBrain Birth Cohort study

Studies have reported mixed findings regarding the effects of mother-infant interaction and maternal distress on children's negative emotional reactivity. In the current study (N = 134 and 107), we examined the effects of maternal Emotional Availability (sensitivity, structuring, non-intrusiveness and non-hostility) and maternal psychological distress on negative reactivity among children in the FinnBrain birth cohort study. In addition, the possible moderating effect of mother-infant interaction on the associations between maternal psychological distress and children's negative reactivity was examined. We used questionnaires to asses maternal psychological distress, observations of mother-infant interaction and observations as well maternal reports of child temperament to overcome the key limitations of many studies relying on single-method assessments. Our results showed that higher maternal sensitivity and structuring at 8 months of child's age were associated with lower mother-reported negative reactivity among children at 24 months. Higher maternal postnatal distress associated with higher parent-reported negative reactivity in children at 12 and 24 months of age when the effects of prenatal distress and the quality of mother-infant interaction were controlled for. Mother-infant interaction and maternal psychological distress did not associate with observations of child negative reactivity. We found no moderation effects of mother-infant interaction regarding the associations between maternal distress and children's negative emotional reactivity. Our findings reflect the importance of developing interventions to reduce the maternal distress symptoms while enhancing maternal sensitivity and structuring to prevent the possible harmful effects of these on child negative reactivity.

Higher attention bias for fear at 8 months of age is associated with better socioemotional competencies during toddlerhood

BACKGROUND

In previous studies, an attention bias for signals of fear and threat has been related to socioemotional problems, such as anxiety symptoms, and socioemotional competencies, such as altruistic behaviors in children, adolescents and adults. However, previous studies lack evidence about these relations among infants and toddlers.

AIMS

Our aim was to study the association between the individual variance in attention bias for faces and, specifically, fearful faces during infancy and socioemotional problems and competencies during toddlerhood.

STUDY DESIGN AND SUBJECTS

The study sample was comprised of 245 children (112 girls). We explored attentional face and fear biases at the age of 8 months using eye tracking and the face-distractor paradigm with neutral, happy and fearful faces and a scrambled-face control stimulus. Socioemotional problems and competencies were reported by parents with the Brief Infant and Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) when children were 24 months old.

OUTCOME MEASURES AND RESULTS

A higher attentional fear bias at 8 months of age was related to higher levels of socioemotional competence at 24 months of age (β = .18, p = .008), when infants' sex and temperamental affectivity, maternal age, education and depressive symptoms were controlled. We found no significant association between attentional face or fear bias and socioemotional problems.

CONCLUSIONS

We found that the heightened attention bias for fearful faces was related to positive outcomes in early socioemotional development. Longitudinal study designs are needed to explore the changes in the relation between the attention bias for fear or threat and socioemotional development during early childhood.

Associations between observed and reported infant negative affectivity, fear and self-regulation, and early communicative development-Evidence from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

Self-regulation and language are intertwined abilities, but the nature of their relations in early childhood when both skills are still emerging is insufficiently understood. Our knowledge of the relations between early negative affectivity and preverbal and verbal communicative development is still limited. Further, observed and reported temperament capture how aspects of temperament operate in different settings but are rarely used in parallel in studies examining early language. During the period of rapid development, longitudinal studies are needed to identify early risk factors for delayed communicative development. We studied relations between aspects of emerging self-regulation and negative affectivity using both observations at 8 months and mother-reports at 6 and 12 months, and communicative development measured by gesturing and vocabulary at 14 and vocabulary at 30 months in 183 children. Mother-reported self-regulation was related to a higher use of communicative gestures and observed self-regulation by gaze aversion to poorer receptive and expressive vocabulary at 14 months, but neither was significantly associated with vocabulary at 30 months. We found little evidence for associations between negative affectivity and fear in infancy and communicative development. Our findings highlight different aspects of self-regulation as both potential risk and protective factors for communicative development. Mixed results indicate a need for a more detailed examination of different strategies of self-regulation in different conditions and developmental stages to yield a deeper understanding of the relations between self-regulation in infancy and communicative development.

Prenatal Stress and the Developing Brain: Postnatal Environments Promoting Resilience

Heightened maternal stress during pregnancy is associated with atypical brain development and an elevated risk for psychopathology in offspring. Supportive environments during early postnatal life may promote brain development and reverse atypical developmental trajectories induced by prenatal stress. We reviewed studies focused on the role of key early environmental factors in moderating associations between prenatal stress exposure and infant brain and neurocognitive outcomes. Specifically, we focused on the associations between parental caregiving quality, environmental enrichment, social support, and socioeconomic status with infant brain and neurocognitive outcomes. We examined the evidence that these factors may moderate the effects of prenatal stress on the developing brain. Complementing findings from translational models, human research suggests that high-quality early postnatal environments are associated with indices of infant neurodevelopment that have also been associated with prenatal stress, such as hippocampal volume and frontolimbic connectivity. Human studies also suggest that maternal sensitivity and higher socioeconomic status may attenuate the effects of prenatal stress on established neurocognitive and neuroendocrine mediators of risk for psychopathology, such as hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning. Biological pathways that may underlie the effects of positive early environments on the infant brain, including the epigenome, oxytocin, and inflammation, are also discussed. Future research in humans should examine resilience-promoting processes in relation to infant brain development using large sample sizes and longitudinal designs. The findings from this review could be incorporated into clinical models of risk and resilience during the perinatal period and used to design more effective early programs that reduce risk for psychopathology.

Unpredictable maternal sensory signals in caregiving behavior are associated with child effortful control

Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to unpredictable patterns of maternal sensory signals during infancy is associated with child neurodevelopment, including poorer effortful control. However, longitudinal effects on child development and possible sex differences are understudied. The aims of the present study were to explore whether exposure to unpredictable maternal sensory signals during infancy is related to child effortful control at 5 years of age and whether child sex moderates these associations. In addition, we examined how exposure to very high vs. low/moderate unpredictability using categorical cut-offs is related to child effortful control. Participants (133 mother-child pairs, all Caucasian) were drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study in Finland. Maternal sensory signals (auditory, visual, tactile) were coded from the 10-min free-play episode on a moment-on-moment basis using Observer XT 11 (Noldus), and the unpredictability of maternal sensory signals was characterized as the entropy rate when the infant was 8 months of age. Child effortful control was assessed via mother reports using the Child Behavior Questionnaire very short form (CBQ-VSF) when the child was 5 years old. Correlational analyses showed that higher unpredictability of maternal sensory signals had a modest association with children's poorer effortful control at 5 years of age. Notably, the linear regression model showed that child sex moderated these associations, as higher exposure to unpredictable maternal sensory signals was related to poorer effortful control among males, but not among females. Moreover, the general linear model showed that exposure to very high unpredictability was associated with poorer child effortful control at 5 years of age and remained significant when adjusted for possible confounding factors. These results are in line with previous findings and suggest that the unpredictability of maternal sensory signals is potentially an important aspect of early caregiving behavior associated with the development of child effortful control.

Maternal sensitivity at the age of 8 months associates with local connectivity of the medial prefrontal cortex in children at 5 years of age

The quality of mother–child interaction, especially maternal sensitivity in caregiving behavior, plays an important role in a child’s later socioemotional development. Numerous studies have indicated associations between poor mother–child interaction and offspring brain structure and function, but more knowledge on how variation in the characteristics of early caregiving is associated with children’s brain structure and function is needed. We investigated whether maternal sensitivity at 8 or 30 months is associated with functional connectivity in a child’s brain at 5 years of age based on the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study (17 and 39 mother–child dyads at 8 and 30 months, respectively, with an overlap of 13 dyads). Maternal sensitivity was assessed during a free play interaction using the Emotional Availability Scales at 8 and 30 months of the children’s age. Task-free functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was acquired at the age of 5 years in 7-min scans while watching the Inscapes movie. Regional homogeneity (ReHo) maps were created from the fMRI data, and multiple regression analysis was performed to assess the relation between maternal sensitivity and ReHo. Maternal sensitivity at the age of 8 months was positively associated with children’s ReHo values within the medial prefrontal cortex. Distal connectivity of this region showed no significant association with maternal sensitivity in a seed-based connectivity analysis. No associations were found between maternal sensitivity during toddlerhood and brain functional connectivity. Together, these results suggest that maternal sensitivity, especially in infancy, may influence offspring brain functional connectivity. However, studies with larger sample sizes are warranted.

The stability of early developing attentional bias for faces and fear from 8 to 30 and 60 months in the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

Most infants exhibit an attentional bias for faces and fearful facial expressions. These biases reduce toward the third year of life, but little is known about the development of the biases beyond early childhood. We used the same methodology longitudinally to assess attention disengagement patterns from nonface control pictures and faces (neutral, happy, and fearful expressions) in a large sample of children at 8, 30, and 60 months (N = 389/393/492, respectively; N = 72 for data in all three assessment; girls > 45.3% in each assessment). "Face bias" was measured as a difference in disengagement probability (DP) from faces (neutral/happy) versus nonface patterns. "Fear bias" was calculated as a difference in DP for fearful versus happy/neutral faces. At group level, DPs followed a nonlinear longitudinal trajectory in all face conditions, being lowest at 8 months, highest at 30 months, and intermediate at 60 months. Face bias declined between 8 and 30 months, but did not change between 30 and 60 months. Fear bias declined linearly from 8 to 60 months. Individual differences in disengagement were generally not stable across age, but weak correlations were found in face bias between 8- and 60-month, and in DPs between 30- and 60-month (rs = .22-.41). The results suggest that prioritized attention to faces-that is, a hallmark of infant cognition and a key aspect of human social behavior-follows a nonlinear trajectory in early childhood and may have only weak continuity from infancy to mid childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Prenatal and early-life environmental factors, family demographics and cortical brain anatomy in 5-year-olds: an MRI study from FinnBrain Birth Cohort

The human brain develops dynamically during early childhood, when the child is sensitive to both genetic programming and extrinsic exposures. Recent studies have found links between prenatal and early life environmental factors, family demographics and the cortical brain morphology in newborns measured by surface area, volume and thickness. Here in this magnetic resonance imaging study, we evaluated whether a similar set of variables associates with cortical surface area and volumes measured in a sample of 170 healthy 5-year-olds from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. We found that child sex, maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index, 5 min Apgar score, neonatal intensive care unit admission and maternal smoking during pregnancy associated with surface areas. Furthermore, child sex, maternal age and maternal level of education associated with brain volumes. Expectedly, many variables deemed important for neonatal brain anatomy (such as birth weight and gestational age at birth) in earlier studies did not associate with brain metrics in our study group of 5-year-olds, which implies that their effects on brain anatomy are age-specific. Future research may benefit from including pre- and perinatal covariates in the analyses when such data are available. Finally, we provide evidence for right lateralization for surface area and volumes, except for the temporal lobes which were left lateralized. These subtle differences between hemispheres are variable across individuals and may be interesting brain metrics in future studies.

Subcortical and hippocampal brain segmentation in 5-year-old children: validation of FSL-FIRST and FreeSurfer against manual segmentation

Developing accurate subcortical volumetric quantification tools is crucial for neurodevelopmental studies, as they could reduce the need for challenging and time‐consuming manual segmentation. In this study, the accuracy of two automated segmentation tools, FSL‐FIRST (with three different boundary correction settings) and FreeSurfer, were compared against manual segmentation of the hippocampus and subcortical nuclei, including the amygdala, thalamus, putamen, globus pallidus, caudate and nucleus accumbens, using volumetric and correlation analyses in 80 5‐year‐olds.

Both FSL‐FIRST and FreeSurfer overestimated the volume on all structures except the caudate, and the accuracy varied depending on the structure. Small structures such as the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, which are visually difficult to distinguish, produced significant overestimations and weaker correlations with all automated methods. Larger and more readily distinguishable structures such as the caudate and putamen produced notably lower overestimations and stronger correlations. Overall, the segmentations performed by FSL‐FIRST's default pipeline were the most accurate, whereas FreeSurfer's results were weaker across the structures.

In line with prior studies, the accuracy of automated segmentation tools was imperfect with respect to manually defined structures. However, apart from amygdala and nucleus accumbens, FSL‐FIRST's agreement could be considered satisfactory (Pearson correlation > 0.74, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) > 0.68 and Dice score coefficient (DSC) > 0.87) with highest values for the striatal structures (putamen, globus pallidus, caudate) (Pearson correlation > 0.77, ICC > 0.87 and DSC > 0.88, respectively). Overall, automated segmentation tools do not always provide satisfactory results, and careful visual inspection of the automated segmentations is strongly advised.

Individual differences in pupil dilation to others' emotional and neutral eyes with varying pupil sizes

Sensitivity to others' emotional signals is an important factor for social interaction. While many studies of emotional reactivity focus on facial emotional expressions, signals such as pupil dilation which can indicate arousal, may also affect observers. For example, observers' pupils dilate when viewing someone with dilated pupils, so-called pupillary contagion. Yet it is unclear how pupil size and emotional expression interact as signals. Further, examining individual differences in emotional reactivity to others can shed light on its mechanisms and potential outcomes. In the current study, adults' (N = 453) pupil size was assessed while they viewed images of the eye region of individuals varying in emotional expression (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry) and pupil size (large, medium, small). Participants showed pupillary contagion regardless of the emotional expression. Individual differences in demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic status) and psychosocial factors (anxiety, depression, sleep problems) were also examined, yet the only factor related to pupillary contagion was socioeconomic status, with higher socioeconomic status predicting less pupillary contagion for emotionally-neutral stimuli. The results suggest that while pupillary contagion is a robust phenomenon, it can vary meaningfully across individuals.

Feasibility of FreeSurfer Processing for T1-Weighted Brain Images of 5-Year-Olds: Semiautomated Protocol of FinnBrain Neuroimaging Lab

Pediatric neuroimaging is a quickly developing field that still faces important methodological challenges. Pediatric images usually have more motion artifact than adult images. The artifact can cause visible errors in brain segmentation, and one way to address it is to manually edit the segmented images. Variability in editing and quality control protocols may complicate comparisons between studies. In this article, we describe in detail the semiautomated segmentation and quality control protocol of structural brain images that was used in FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study and relies on the well-established FreeSurfer v6.0 and ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta Analysis) consortium tools. The participants were typically developing 5-year-olds [n = 134, 5.34 (SD 0.06) years, 62 girls]. Following a dichotomous quality rating scale for inclusion and exclusion of images, we explored the quality on a region of interest level to exclude all regions with major segmentation errors. The effects of manual edits on cortical thickness values were relatively minor: less than 2% in all regions. Supplementary Material cover registration and additional edit options in FreeSurfer and comparison to the computational anatomy toolbox (CAT12). Overall, we conclude that despite minor imperfections FreeSurfer can be reliably used to segment cortical metrics from T1-weighted images of 5-year-old children with appropriate quality assessment in place. However, custom templates may be needed to optimize the results for the subcortical areas. Through visual assessment on a level of individual regions of interest, our semiautomated segmentation protocol is hopefully helpful for investigators working with similar data sets, and for ensuring high quality pediatric neuroimaging data.

The Connection and Development of Unpredictability and Sensitivity in Maternal Care Across Early Childhood

Both patterns of maternal sensory signals and sensitive care have shown to be crucial elements shaping child development. However, research concerning these aspects of maternal care has focused mainly on maternal sensitivity with fewer studies evaluating the impact of patterns of maternal behaviors and changes in these indices across infancy and childhood. The aims of this study were to explore how maternal unpredictability of sensory signals and sensitivity develop and associate with each other from infancy to toddlerhood and whether elevated maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms relate to maternal unpredictable signals and sensitivity in toddlerhood. The study population consisted of 356 mother–child dyads assessed at 30 months; a subset of 103 mother–child dyads additionally participated in 8 months assessment. Maternal unpredictability and sensitivity were assessed from video-recorded free-play episodes at 8 and 30 months. Maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed with questionnaires at gestational weeks 14, 24, 34 and 3, 6, 12, and 24 months. Mean level of mothers’ unpredictability decreased on average whereas sensitivity did not change between infancy and toddlerhood. Both maternal unpredictability and sensitivity showed moderate level of individual stability from infancy to toddlerhood and these two measures were modestly correlated within each age. Elevated maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were not related to unpredictability but related to lower maternal sensitivity in toddlerhood. These results identify unpredictable sensory signals as a characteristic of parental care that is independent of standard quality measures and suggest that it may be less influenced by maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms.

Maternal prenatal psychological distress associates with offspring early-life wheezing - FinnBrain Birth Cohort

BACKGROUND

Exposure to prenatal maternal psychological distress may contribute to the development of childhood atopic disorders. Little is known about the importance of distress severity and its duration for the risk. Our aim was to investigate how chronic maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms across gestation influence the risk of wheezing and eczema at child age 24 months.

METHODS

The study population was drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, including 1305 mother-infant dyads followed across gestation until the child age of 24 months when the outcomes were mother-reported wheezing ever and doctor-diagnosed eczema. To investigate the risk of wheezing phenotypes, wheezing with and without eczema was separated. Maternal distress was assessed with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale for depressive and the Symptom Checklist-90 for anxiety symptoms three times during pregnancy, and the chronicity was demonstrated using symptom trajectories composed by latent growth mixture modeling.

RESULTS

Of the children, 219/1305 (17%) had wheezing ever and 285/1276 (22%) had eczema. Risk of wheezing ever was elevated with maternal consistently high depressive symptoms (adjusted odds ratio 2.74; 95% confidence interval 1.37-5.50) or moderate and increasing anxiety symptoms (1.94; 1.06-3.54, respectively). Similarly, wheezing without eczema was associated with consistently high depressive (3.60; 1.63-7.94, respectively) and moderate and increasing anxiety symptoms (2.43; 1.21-4.91, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS

Maternal chronic psychological distress across gestation was associated with toddler wheezing and especially wheezing without other atopic features (eczema). This finding supports the theory of intrauterine programming effect by maternal psychological distress on offspring immune system and respiratory morbidity.

Maternal Psychological Distress and Executive Functions Are Associated During Early Parenthood - A FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

Parental executive functioning (EF) and parenting behaviors can be affected by the multiple stressors that are often present during early parenthood. However, little is known about how commonly experienced psychological distress during early parenthood is associated with parental EF capacity. We explored the links between psychological distress and EFs in a general population sample of 150 Finnish birth cohort mothers with 2.5-year-old children. The symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, and poor couple relationship adjustment were measured with the self-report questionnaires EPDS, SCL-90, AIS, and RDAS. EFs were assessed with five computerized Cogstate tasks. When the psychological distress measures were added to a hierarchical regression analysis as continuous variables, no significant single or additive associations with EFs were found. When the distress measures were dichotomized to compare symptoms below/above cutoffs indicating clinically elevated levels, single distress domains remained as non-significant predictors, but a cumulative risk index of the number of concurrent clinically elevated distress domains was significantly associated with EFs. Thus, mothers with a higher number of concurrent clinically elevated psychological distress domains (i.e., depression, anxiety, insomnia, and poor couple relationship adjustment) tended to have lower EFs. This association is possibly bi-directional – clinically elevated distress within several domains could have a cumulative, depleting effect on maternal EF capacity, but a lower EF capacity could also increase the vulnerability for experienced distress within several concurrent domains. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify potential causal links between stressors and EF.

Maternal Executive Functioning, Emotional Availability and Psychological Distress During Toddlerhood: A FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

Executive functioning (EF) is one of the building blocks in parental caregiving behavior, and contextual variables have been reported to moderate the link between EF and caregiving behavior. Although psychological distress due to various factors is prevalent during early parenthood and is negatively associated with adult EF, it is not known whether psychological distress influences the maternal EF/caregiving link. This study explored the association between maternal EF and caregiving behavior (more specifically, Emotional Availability/EA), and whether single and cumulative maternal psychological distress domains moderated the EF/EA association in a general population sample of 137 Finnish birth cohort mothers with 2.5-year-old children. EF was measured with a composite of five computerized Cogstate tasks, EA with the Emotional Availability Scales, and three psychological distress domains with self-report questionnaires (depression: EPDS, anxiety: SCL-90, insomnia: AIS). Better EF was significantly associated with more positive, sensitive caregiving, but this association was no longer significant when controlling for education level. Neither individual nor cumulative distress domains moderated the EF/EA association significantly, although the observed moderation effects were in the expected direction. These findings suggest that EF should be recognized alongside socioemotional factors as variables that are associated with parental caregiving behavior during toddlerhood. Furthermore, if the non-significant moderation results are replicated, they indicate that mothers in community samples are not at great risk for psychological distress that would compromise their capacity to utilize their EF while caring for their child. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings, as well as to examine these associations among fathers and in samples that have higher levels of chronic stressors. Studies with more diverse samples in terms of distress levels and EF performance would provide further insight into early childhood parenting and its risk factors.

Prenatal Glucocorticoid-Exposed Infants Do Not Show an Age-Typical Fear Bias at 8 Months of Age - Preliminary Findings From the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

Synthetic glucocorticoids (sGC) are frequently administered to pregnant women at risk for preterm delivery to promote fetal lung maturation. Despite their undeniable beneficial effects in lung maturation, the impact of these hormones on developing brain is less clear. Recent human studies suggest that emotional and behavioral disorders are more common among sGC-exposed vs. non-exposed children, but the literature is sparse and controversial. We investigated if prenatal sGC exposure altered fear bias, a well-established infant attention phenotype, at 8-months. We used eye tracking and an overlap paradigm with control, neutral, happy, and fearful faces, and salient distractors, to evaluate infants’ attention disengagement from faces, and specifically from fearful vs. neutral and happy faces (i.e., a fear bias) in a sample (N = 363) of general population from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. sGC exposed infants (N = 12) did not differ from non-exposed infants (N = 351) in their overall probability of disengagement in any single stimulus condition. However, in comparison with non-exposed infants, they did not show the age-typical fear bias and this association remained after controlling for confounding factors such as prematurity, gestational age at birth, birth weight, sex, and maternal postnatal depressive symptoms. Prenatal sGC exposure may alter emotional processing in infants. The atypical emotion processing in turn may be a predictor of emotional problems later in development. Future longitudinal studies are needed in order to evaluate the long-term consequences of sGC exposure for the developing brain.

Maternal Alexithymic Traits Are Related to Lower Maternal Sensitivity and Higher Hostility in Maternal Caregiving Behavior-The FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study

Background: The quality of parental caregiving behavior with their child plays a key role in optimal mother–infant interaction and in supporting child adaptive development. Sensitive caregiving behavior, in turn, requires the ability to identify and understand emotions. Maternal alexithymia, with difficulties in identifying and describing feelings or emotions, as well as a concrete way of thinking, could potentially complicate the quality of caregiving. In this study, we aim to explore the possible association between maternal alexithymic traits and the quality of maternal caregiving behavior.

Methods: The study sample consisted of 158 mother–infant dyads within the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study population with an available report of maternal alexithymic traits at 6 months postpartum and observational data on maternal caregiving behavior at 8 months postpartum. Alexithymia was measured using the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) including three alexithymia dimensions—Difficulty Identifying Feelings, Difficulty Describing Feelings (DDF), and Externally Oriented Thinking (EOT). Maternal caregiving behavior was assessed using the Emotional Availability Scale and in this study, all four parent dimensions (Sensitivity, Structuring, Non-intrusiveness and Non-hostility) were included. Maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms at 6 months postpartum were controlled for as potential confounders. In addition, background factors of mother's age and gestational weeks at the time of child birth, maternal educational level, monthly income and parity, as well as relationship status and the gender of the baby were assessed.

Results: Maternal TAS-20 total score correlated negatively with Sensitivity (r = −0.169, p = 0.034) and with non-intrusiveness (r = −0.182, p = 0.022). In addition, maternal DDF correlated negatively with Sensitivity (r = −0.168, p = 0.035) and EOT with Non-hostility (r = −0.159, p = 0.047). Furthermore, in regression analyses with controlling for the associated background factors, maternal total score of alexithymic traits (p = 0.034, η²p = 0.029) and higher DDF (p = 0.044, η²p = 0.026) remained significantly associated with lower Sensitivity and higher EOT remained significantly associated with lower Non-hostility (p = 0.030, η²p = 0.030).

Conclusions: In this explorative study we found preliminary evidence for the hypothesis that higher maternal alexithymic traits associate with lower maternal sensitivity and more hostile maternal caregiving behavior. Further studies are needed to explore these hypotheses and to investigate their possible implications for child development.

Newborn white matter microstructure moderates the association between maternal postpartum depressive symptoms and infant negative reactivity

Maternal postpartum depression is a prominent risk factor for aberrant child socioemotional development, but there is little understanding about the neural phenotypes that underlie infant sensitivity to maternal depression. We examined whether newborn white matter fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of white matter maturity, moderates the association between maternal postpartum depressive symptoms and infant negative reactivity at 6 months. Participants were 80 mother–infant dyads participating in a prospective population-based cohort, and included families whose newborns underwent a magnetic resonance/diffusion tensor imaging scan at 2–5 weeks of age and whose mothers reported their own depressive symptoms at 3 and 6 months postpartum and infant negative emotional reactivity at 6 months. The whole-brain FA moderated the association between maternal depressive symptoms and mother-reported infant negative reactivity at 6 months after adjusting for the covariates. Maternal depressive symptoms were positively related to infant negative reactivity among infants with high or average FA in the whole brain and in corpus callosum and cingulum, but not among those with low FA. The link between maternal depressive symptoms and infant negative reactivity was moderated by newborn FA. The variation in white matter microstructure might play a role in child susceptibility to parental distress.

Neonatal amygdala volumes and the development of self-regulation from early infancy to toddlerhood

Objective: At the broadest level, self-regulation (SR) refers to a range of separate, but interrelated, processes (e.g., working memory, inhibition, and emotion regulation) central for the regulation of cognition, emotion, and behavior that contribute to a plethora of health and mental health outcomes. SR skills develop rapidly in early childhood, but their neurobiological underpinnings are not yet well understood. The amygdala is one key structure in negative emotion generation that may disrupt SR. In the current study, we investigated the associations between neonatal amygdala volumes and mother-reported and observed child SR during the first 3 years of life. We expected that larger neonatal amygdala volumes would be related to poorer SR in children. Method: We measured amygdala volumes from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) performed at age M = 3.7 ± 1.0. We examined the associations between the amygdala volumes corrected for intracranial volume (ICV) and (a) parent-reported indicators of SR at 6, 12, and 24 months (N = 102) and (b) observed task-based indicators of SR (working memory and inhibitory control) at 30 months of age in a smaller subset of participants (N = 80). Results: Bilateral neonatal amygdala volumes predicted poorer working memory at 30 months in girls, whereas no association was detected between amygdalae and inhibitory control or parent-reported SR. The left amygdala by sex interaction survived correction for multiple comparisons. Conclusions: Neonatal amygdala volume is associated with working memory, particularly among girls, and the association is observed earlier than in prior studies. Moreover, our findings suggest that the neural correlates for parent-reported, compared to observed early life SR, may differ. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Behavioral Regulatory Problems Are Associated With a Lower Attentional Bias to Fearful Faces During Infancy

To investigate the role of early regulatory problems (RP), such as problems in feeding, sleeping, and calming down during later development, the association between parent-reported RP at 3 months (no-RP, n = 110; RP, n = 66) and attention to emotional faces at 8 months was studied. Eight-month-old infants had a strong tendency to look at faces and to specifically fearful faces, and the individual variance in this tendency was assessed with eye tracking using a face-distractor paradigm. The early RPs were related to a lower attention bias to fearful faces compared to happy and neutral faces after controlling for temperamental negative affectivity. This suggests that early RPs are related to the processing of emotional information later during infancy.

Maternal Anxiety Symptoms and Self-Regulation Capacity Are Associated With the Unpredictability of Maternal Sensory Signals in Caregiving Behavior

The unpredictability of maternal sensory signals in caregiving behavior has been recently found to be linked with infant neurodevelopment. The research area is new, and very little is yet known, how maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms and specific parental characteristics relate to the unpredictable maternal care. The aims of the current study were to explore how pre- and postnatal maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms and self-regulation capacity associate with the unpredictability of maternal sensory signals. The study population consisted of 177 mother-infant dyads. The unpredictability of the maternal sensory signals was explored from the video-recorded mother-infant free play situation when the infant was 8 months of age. Pre- and postnatal anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured by questionnaires prenatally at gwks 14, 24, 34, and 3 and 6 months postpartum. Maternal self-regulation capacity, a trait considered to be stable in adulthood, was assessed using adult temperament questionnaire when the infant was 12 months of age. We found that elevated prenatal maternal anxiety symptoms associated with higher unpredictability in the maternal care while depressive symptoms were unrelated to the unpredictability of maternal care. Moreover, the association was moderated by maternal self-regulation capacity, as higher anxiety symptoms during pre-and postnatal period were associated more unpredictability among the mothers with low self-regulation capacity. The combination of higher amount of maternal anxiety symptoms and lower self-regulation capacity seems to constitute specific risk for the unpredictable maternal care.

A systematic review of MRI studies of language development from birth to 2 years of age

Neurocognitive functions supporting language development start to develop well before first words are spoken during the first years of life. This process coincides with the initial growth spurt of the brain. While the core components of the language network are well characterized in adults and children, the initial neural correlates of language skills are still relatively unknown. We reviewed 10 studies identified via a systematic search that combined magnetic resonance imaging and language-related measures in healthy infants from birth to 2 years of age. We aimed to describe the current knowledge as well as point out viable future directions for similar studies. Expectedly, the implicated cerebral areas included many established components of the language networks, including frontal and temporal regions. A volumetric leftward asymmetry of the brain was suggested as a determinant of language skills, yet with marked interindividual variation. Overall, temporal and frontal brain volumes associated positively with language skills. Positive associations were described between the maturation of language related white matter tracts and language skills. The language networks showed adult-like structural similarities already in neonates, with weaker asymmetry compared to adults. In summary, we found some evidence that the language circuit described in older age groups is also associated to language skills during the first 2 years of life. However, across the reviewed studies there were no systematic neural correlates of language skills, which is partly explained by a modest number of studies, scattered representation of ages in measurements and the variance in the used methods.

Newborn left amygdala volume associates with attention disengagement from fearful faces at eight months

After 5 months of age, infants begin to prioritize attention to fearful over other facial expressions. One key proposition is that amygdala and related early-maturing subcortical network, is important for emergence of this attentional bias - however, empirical data to support these assertions are lacking. In this prospective longitudinal study, we measured amygdala volumes from MR images in 65 healthy neonates at 2-5 weeks of gestation corrected age and attention disengagement from fearful vs. non-fearful facial expressions at 8 months with eye tracking. Overall, infants were less likely to disengage from fearful than happy/neutral faces, demonstrating an age-typical bias for fear. Left, but not right, amygdala volume (corrected for intracranial volume) was positively associated with the likelihood of disengaging attention from fearful faces to a salient lateral distractor (r = .302, p = .014). No association was observed with the disengagement from neutral or happy faces in equivalent conditions (r = .166 and .125, p = .186 and .320, respectively). These results are the first to link the amygdala volume with the emerging perceptual vigilance for fearful faces during infancy. They suggest a link from the prenatally defined variability in the amygdala size to early postnatal emotional and social traits.

Maternal prenatal hair cortisol is associated with prenatal depressive symptom trajectories

Maternal prenatal cortisol levels have been inconsistently associated with self-reports of prenatal psychological distress (PD). Previous research has linked hair cortisol concentration (HCC) evaluating cumulatively the previous months with cross-sectional PD measures that usually cover the past week(s), which may lead to misleading conclusions on their relations. We aimed to investigate how maternal HCC relates to cumulative PD measures across pregnancy.

METHODS

Subjects (N = 595) were drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Maternal HCC was measured from hair samples collected at gestational week (gwk) 24 (HCC1, n = 467) and at delivery (HCC2, n = 222). As HCC1 and HCC2 comprised mostly of different subjects, they were considered as independent populations. Maternal PD assessments at gwks 14, 24, and 34 were the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the anxiety subscale of the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90), the Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire -Revised2 (PRAQ-R2), and a daily hassles scale. Cumulative PD comprised of the mean scores of two consecutive assessments (mean1 = gwks 14 and 24; mean2 = gwks 24 and 34). In addition, EPDS and SCL scores were modelled by using growth mixture modelling to identify symptom trajectory categories. Regression models were adjusted for age, body mass index, education and use of selective serotonin/serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor medication.

RESULTS

In the adjusted regression model, higher HCC2 was related to the "consistently elevated" prenatal depressive symptoms trajectory in comparison to "consistently low" (β =.71, p =.021) and "low and increasing" (β =.82, p = .011) symptom trajectories. Additionally, the cumulative mean (mean 1) of daily hassles in relationships was associated with HCC1 (β = 0.25, p = .004). General or pregnancy-related anxiety symptoms were unrelated to HCC after adjustment for the covariates.

CONCLUSIONS

The assessment of cumulative or trajectory measures of PD can reveal important associations with maternal prenatal HCC, even though the associations are generally weak. Of the different dimensions of PD, prenatal trajectories of depressive symptoms were most consistently linked with end-pregnancy HCC levels.

How maternal pre- and postnatal symptoms of depression and anxiety affect early mother-infant interaction?

BACKGROUND

Maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress, such as anxiety and depression, may negatively affect mother-infant interaction quality. However, more information is needed on the role of specific types and timings of pre- and postnatal distress symptoms on mother-infant interaction. Research on the role of maternal anxiety is especially scarce.

METHODS

We examined whether maternal pregnancy- related anxiety (gestational weeks 24 and 34), general anxiety or depressive symptoms (gw 14, 24 and 34 and at the infant age of 3 and 6 months) associate with the quality of mother-infant interaction when the child is eight months old. Maternal symptoms (N = 190) were measured with EPDS, SCL-90 anxiety subscale and PRAQ-R2. Mother-infant interaction was measured with the Emotional Availability Scales (EAS).

RESULTS

After controlling for background factors, general anxiety at the 3rd pregnancy trimester was associated with higher maternal intrusiveness in EAS. Depressive symptoms at 6 months postpartum associated with lower maternal structuring behavior and with the child's lower involvement of the mother.

LIMITATIONS

A very small number of mothers with severe symptoms of depression and anxiety.

CONCLUSIONS

Prenatal anxiety and postnatal depressive symptoms may each have unique effects on the different areas of mother-infant interaction, suggesting the need to develop more targeted interventions for mothers with different symptom profiles and timings. Prenatally anxious mothers could potentially benefit from early interventions decreasing stress and anxiety symptoms and specifically promoting their ability to read infant cues appropriately. Infants of postnatally depressed mothers may need interventions where both members of the dyad receive help.

Trajectories of maternal pre- and postnatal anxiety and depressive symptoms and infant fear: Moderation by infant sex

BACKGROUND

Prior work has examined the links between pre- and postnatal maternal distress and infant negative affectivity; however, there is little understanding about how the continuity of infant exposure to pre- and postnatal maternal distress relates to infant development. This study investigated the continuity of maternal pre- and postnatal depressive and anxiety symptoms and their relations with infant fear among 391 mother-infant dyads. An additional aim was to consider infant sex as a moderating factor.

METHODS

Maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured during gestational weeks 14, 24 and 34 and 3 and 6 months postpartum. Subsequently, infant fear was measured using mother reports (IBQ-R) at 6 months and in a laboratory setting (Lab-TAB Masks episode) at 8 months. Using growth mixture modeling, a three-class model describing the course of maternal symptoms across pregnancy and the early postnatal period was identified, consisting of mothers with "Consistently Low Distress", "Prenatal-Only Distress", and "Consistently High Distress".

RESULTS

Infant girls exposed to prenatal-only maternal distress were higher in observed fear than infant boys exposed to prenatal-only distress. Infant girls exposed to consistently high distress also showed lower observed fear than their counterparts exposed to prenatal-only maternal distress.

LIMITATIONS

The main limitation of the study is the relatively small group size within the Consistently High subgroup.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that girls might be particularly sensitive to maternal distress, and that prenatal-only and continuous distress exposure are differentially related to female infant fear.

Across continents and demographics, unpredictable maternal signals are associated with children's cognitive function

Background

Early life experiences have persisting influence on brain function throughout life. Maternal signals constitute a primary source of early life experiences, and their quantity and quality during sensitive developmental periods exert enduring effects on cognitive function and emotional and social behaviors. Here we examined if, in addition to established qualitative dimensions of maternal behavior during her interactions with her infant and child, patterns of maternal signals may contribute to the maturation of children's executive functions. We focused primarily on effortful control, a potent predictor of mental health outcomes later in life.

Methods

In two independent prospective cohorts in Turku, Finland (N = 135), and Irvine, CA, USA (N = 192) that differed significantly in race/ethnicity and sociodemographic parameters, we assessed whether infant exposure to unpredictable patterns of maternal-derived sensory signals portended poor effortful control.

Outcomes

In both the Irvine and Turku cohorts, unpredictable sequences of maternal behavior during infancy were associated with worse effortful control at one year of age. Longitudinal analyses demonstrated that this association persisted for as long as each cohort was assessed-until two years of age in the Turku cohort and to 9.5 years in the Irvine cohort. The relation of unpredictable maternal signals during infancy and the measures of executive function persisted after adjusting for covariates.

Interpretations

The consistency of our findings across two cohorts from different demographic backgrounds substantiated the finding that patterns, and specifically unpredictable sequences, of maternal behaviors may influence the development of executive functions which may be associated with vulnerability to subsequent psychopathology.

Fund

This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards P50MH096889, HD051852, NS041298, HD02413, HD050662, HD065823, and by the FinnBrain funders: Academy of Finland (129839, 134950, 253270, 286829, 287908, 308176, 308252), Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, and State Research Grants (P3498, P3654).

Maternal pre- and postnatal anxiety symptoms and infant attention disengagement from emotional faces

BACKGROUND

Biases in socio-emotional attention may be early markers of risk for self-regulation difficulties and mental illness. We examined the associations between maternal pre- and postnatal anxiety symptoms and infant attention patterns to faces, with particular focus on attentional biases to threat, across male and female infants.

METHODS

A general population, Caucasian sample of eight-month old infants (N = 362) were tested using eye-tracking and an attention disengagement (overlap) paradigm, with happy, fearful, neutral, and phase-scrambled faces and distractors. Maternal self-reported anxiety symptoms were assessed with the Symptom Checklist-90/anxiety subscale at five time points between gestational week 14 and 6 months postpartum.

RESULTS

Probability of disengagement was lowest for fearful faces in the whole sample. Maternal pre- but not postnatal anxiety symptoms associated with higher threat bias in infants, and the relation between maternal anxiety symptoms in early pregnancy and higher threat bias in infants remained significant after controlling for maternal postnatal symptoms. Maternal postnatal anxiety symptoms, in turn, associated with higher overall probability of disengagement from faces to distractors, but the effects varied by child sex.

LIMITATIONS

The small number of mothers suffering from very severe symptoms. No control for the comorbidity of depressive symptoms.

CONCLUSIONS

Maternal prenatal anxiety symptoms associate with infant's heightened attention bias for threat. Maternal postnatal anxiety symptoms, in turn, associate with infant's overall disengagement probability differently for boys and girls. Boys may show enhanced vigilance for distractors, except when viewing fearful faces, and girls enhanced vigilance for all socio-emotional stimuli. Long-term implications of these findings remain to be explored.

The courses of maternal and paternal depressive and anxiety symptoms during the prenatal period in the FinnBrain Birth Cohort study

Maternal prenatal symptoms of depression and anxiety have been suggested to impose differential effects on later offspring development, depending on their characteristics, such as timing, intensity and persistence. Paternal symptoms have been less investigated. While knowledge on these trajectory characteristics is essential for improved comprehension of prenatal stress, prospective studies including both expecting parents have been scarce. We aim at identifying and comparing the trajectories of prenatal depressive and anxiety symptoms in both parents in a pregnancy cohort design. The sample included 3202 mothers and 2076 fathers who were recruited to the FinnBrain Birth Cohort study (www.finnbrain.fi). Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and general anxiety by the anxiety scale of the Symptom Checklist -90 (SCL-90) repeatedly at 14, 24, and 34 gestational weeks. Five differential depressive and four anxiety symptom trajectories were identified across pregnancy both in mothers and in fathers. The trajectories of consistently low depressive or anxiety symptoms were associated with higher educational level in both parents, and with nulliparity and non-smoking during pregnancy in mothers. Parents with consistently high or increasing levels of symptoms had more often prenatal SSRI medication. The congruences between elevated depressive and anxiety symptoms at any point in pregnancy, as well as parental trajectories within families were low. However, in this population-based sample, the self-reported symptom levels of both parents were generally very low. Variance in timing and persistence of parent-reported prenatal depressive and anxiety symptoms is potentially important, while symptom trajectories are very similar in mothers and fathers. These differential symptom trajectories and the significance of their correlates should be acknowledged when studying prenatal stress exposures and the related outcomes in children.

Maternal Depressive Symptoms During the Pre- and Postnatal Periods and Infant Attention to Emotional Faces

We examined how infants' attentional disengagement from happy, fearful, neutral, and phase-scrambled faces at 8 months, as assessed by eye tracking, is associated with trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms from early pregnancy to 6 months postpartum (decreasing n = 48, increasing n = 34, and consistently low symptom levels n = 280). The sample (mother-infant dyads belonging to a larger FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study) was collected between 5/2013-6/2016. The overall disengagement probability from faces to distractors was not related to maternal depressive symptoms, but fear bias was heightened in infants whose mothers reported decreasing or increasing depressive symptoms. Exacerbated attention to fearful faces in infants of mothers with depressive symptoms may be independent of the timing of the symptoms in the pre- and postnatal stages.

Human milk cortisol concentration predicts experimentally induced infant fear reactivity: moderation by infant sex

Little consideration has been given to the possibility of human infant development being shaped via lactocrine programming, and by breast milk cortisol levels specifically. Despite animal models indicating that glucocorticoid (GC) exposure via lactation might modify brain development and behavior, only one study has reported that milk cortisol levels were positively associated with infant negative affectivity, especially fearfulness and sadness-early emerging risk factors for internalizing difficulties such as anxiety. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether human milk cortisol is associated with mother-reported fearfulness and experimentally induced infant fear reactivity. Mother-infant dyads (n = 65) enrolled in the FinnBrain Cohort Study participated. Breast milk samples were obtained 2.5 months postpartum, and milk cortisol concentrations were ascertained using validated luminescence immunoassay methodology. Infant fear reactivity was assessed using maternal reports 6 months postpartum and in a laboratory 8 months postpartum. There was a significant interaction between infant sex and milk cortisol such that higher milk cortisol was related to higher infant fear reactivity in a laboratory setting in girls (β = 0.36, p = .04) but not in boys (β = -0.15, p = .40). Milk cortisol was not associated with mother-reported infant fearfulness. Results suggest that higher human milk cortisol concentrations are associated with elevated experimentally induced fear in infancy. Findings support lactocrine programming, and suggest that mothers may "communicate" vital information about stressful environments via cortisol contained in breast milk, shaping girls' early emotional reactivity.

Correlation between the Cogstate computerized measure and WAIS-IV among birth cohort mothers

Objective

Large studies, with limited resources call for cost-effective cognitive assessment methods. Computerized tests offer viable alternatives but more data are needed on their functioning. Our aim was to evaluate the overlap between a computerized neuropsychological test battery and a traditional test of general intelligence (IQ).

Method

Cognitive functioning was assessed in birth cohort mothers (n = 80) with two widely used methods: Cogstate, computerized test battery, and WAIS-IV, a traditional IQ test. Correlational analyses were conducted.

Results

We found weak-to-moderate correlations between the measures, except for verbal comprehension. The indices of overall performance showed more consistent correlations than Subtests.

Discussion

The overall correlations were in accordance with earlier studies. Cogstate is relatively independent of verbal comprehension abilities. The choice of the cognitive assessment method should be strongly guided by the research question. More studies are needed to evaluate the applicability of the Cogstate Composite Score in cognitive screening.

Maternal prenatal stress and infant emotional reactivity six months postpartum

BACKGROUND

Maternal prenatal stress has been related to infant negative affect. However, it is still unclear how different sources of maternal prenatal stress such as depressive, anxiety and pregnancy-specific anxiety symptoms are associated with reactivity outcomes. This study aimed to test the associations between different sources of maternal prenatal stress and the aspects of infant emotional reactivity at six months.

METHOD

Our study population (n=282) was drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Prenatal stress was measured by questionnaires on maternal depression, general anxiety and pregnancy-specific anxiety at three time points across pregnancy (gwk 14, 24, 34). Based on the symptom scores, the sample was divided into mothers with high stress during pregnancy (n=110) and mothers with low stress during pregnancy (n=172). Mother-reported infant emotional reactivity and its subscales were measured six months postpartum.

RESULTS

After controlling for background variables and maternal postnatal symptoms, overall negative emotional reactivity (β=0.20, p<0.01), and its aspects fearfulness (β=0.15, p=.057) and falling reactivity (β=-0.22, p<0.01), were predicted by only pregnancy-specific anxiety. No significant predictors were found for infant positive reactivity after adjusting for confounders.

LIMITATIONS

Mother reports of both maternal symptoms and infant reactivity were used, which might increase the risk of reporting bias.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings suggest that mothers experiencing stress should be provided intervention during pregnancy, and that screening should have a particular focus on pregnancy-related worries.