Exploring the impact of prenatal and postnatal maternal adversity on child neurodevelopment

Abstract

Neurodevelopment in-utero and during the first couple postnatal years occurs at a rapid pace with biological processes working to establish the structural and functional blueprint of the brain. At this time, the brain is highly sensitive and responsive to the environment to shape its developmental course. Maternal experiences are principal to the type of developmental environment offspring are exposed to. Indeed, maternal adversity experienced during the prenatal and postnatal period is associated with atypical cognitive and socioemotional functioning in children. However, the underlying biological mechanisms remain inconclusive. The goal of this thesis was to explore how adverse maternal experiences during the prenatal and postnatal period affects subsequent child neurodevelopment. The sample consisted of mother-child dyads from the Maternal Adversity, Vulnerability, and Neurodevelopment (MAVAN) cohort. Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging techniques were employed to image child neurodevelopment from 6-12 years of age. Behavioural, genomic, and demographic information from the MAVAN sample were also accounted for. Study 1 found that the impact of prenatal maternal adversity on structural neurodevelopment is moderated by the function of the serotonin transporter gene network. Study 2 revealed that when engaging in implicit emotion regulation, children of mothers who experienced perinatal adversity recruited different regions compared to children whose mothers did not experience adversity. Study 3 showed that perinatal maternal adversity was associated with altered topological properties of the default mode network and frontoparietal network in middle childhood. Finally, study 4 demonstrated that a combined structural and functional imaging approach was more sensitive to alterations in resting-state network connectivity than either modality alone. This thesis provides evidence that adverse maternal experience during early, formative developmental periods can have lasting effects on brain structure and function into middle childhood. Such research may inform and encourage interventional efforts targeted towards improving maternal conditions perinatally and/or development in childhood.