Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 74, Issue 11, 1 December 2013, Pages 837-844
Biological Psychiatry

Archival Report
Prenatal Maternal Depression Associates with Microstructure of Right Amygdala in Neonates at Birth

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.06.019Get rights and content

Background

Antenatal maternal cortisol levels associate with alterations in the amygdala, a structure associated with emotion regulation, in the offspring. However, because offspring brain and behavior are commonly assessed years after birth, the timing of such maternal influences is unclear. This study aimed to examine the association between antenatal maternal depressive symptomatology and neonatal amygdala volume and microstructure and thus establish evidence for the transgenerational transmission of vulnerability for affective disorders during prenatal development.

Methods

Our study recruited Asian mothers at 10 to 13 weeks pregnancy and assessed maternal depression at 26 weeks gestation using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Structural magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging were performed with 157 nonsedated, 6- to 14-day-old newborns and then analyzed to extract the volume, fractional anisotropy, and axial diffusivity values of the amygdala.

Results

Adjusting for household income, maternal age, and smoking exposure, postconceptual age at magnetic resonance imaging, and birth weight, we found significantly lower fractional anisotropy (p = .009) and axial diffusivity (p = .028), but not volume (p = .993), in the right amygdala in the infants of mothers with high compared with those with low-normal Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale scores.

Conclusions

The results reveal a significant relation between antenatal maternal depression and the neonatal microstructure of the right amygdala, a brain region closely associated with stress reactivity and vulnerability for mood anxiety disorders. These findings suggest the prenatal transmission of vulnerability for depression from mother to child and that interventions targeting maternal depression should begin early in pregnancy.

Section snippets

Subjects

One hundred eighty-nine infants of mothers who participated in a birth cohort study, Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes, were recruited for neuroimaging. The GUSTO cohort consisted of pregnant Asian women attending the first trimester antenatal ultrasound scan clinic at the National University Hospital and KK Women's and Children's Hospital in Singapore. Birth outcome and pregnancy measures were obtained from hospital records. The parents were Singapore citizens or permanent

Demographics

Among 189 neonates who underwent MRI scans, our study excluded 11 with gestational age less than 37 weeks, 12 with birth weight less than 2500 g, 4 with a 5-minute Apgar score less than 7, and 9 with large motion in the MRI data via visual inspection. In addition, nine neonates whose mothers did not return the EPDS questionnaire were also excluded from this study. Hence, the sample size in this study was 157 neonates. Among them, 42 mothers had an EPDS score less than or equal to 5 (low-normal

Discussion

Our findings reveal an association between antenatal maternal depressive symptomatology and brain microstructure in very early neonatal life. The mechanism for this association is unclear and may include genomic and environmental influences operating during fetal development with the potential to later affect infant behavior and temperament. Nevertheless, we expect that the nature of these associations is not wholly genomic, as studies of antenatal maternal depression reveal effects on child

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