Developmental psychobiology最新文献

Fetal iron status has long-lasting effects on neurodevelopmental outcomes and risk of psychopathology. Although prenatal exposure to maternal psychological stress has been linked to offspring peripheral iron status at birth, it is unknown whether maternal prenatal stress is related to fetal brain iron during gestation. We utilized 86 multi-echo functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans from 52 fetuses (23 females; gestational age [GA] 24–38 weeks) to estimate R2* relaxometry as a proxy for fetal brain iron levels. Our results showed that greater maternal anxiety symptoms were associated with higher estimated fetal iron levels in the left cerebellar vermis after controlling for fetal sex and GA. Our finding suggests that fetal brain iron levels may be sensitive to exposure to maternal stress in utero. In a subset of participants with available infant outcome data (n = 31), no significant associations were found between fetal brain iron levels and later cognitive, language, and motor development during infancy. Overall, this study presents the first evidence of associations between maternal prenatal stress and fetal brain iron, which lays the groundwork for future investigations of biological embedding of prenatal maternal stress on the fetal brain and later neurodevelopment through prenatal iron accumulation as a potential mechanism.

The present study investigated the interaction effects of family socioeconomic status (SES), parent–child relationship, and COMT Val158Met polymorphism on the executive function (EF) of Chinese preschool-aged children. The sample comprised 748 preschoolers (M_age = 5.02 years, SD = 0.91, 50.1% boys) and their parents. Parents were asked to fill out several questionnaires assessing family SES, parent–child relationship, and their children's EF. Saliva samples were taken from the children for DNA analysis. Our analysis revealed a significant three-way interaction involving the crucial environmental factor, family SES, and the parent–child relationship, in conjunction with the individual factor, the COMT Val158Met polymorphism, in predicting the EF of preschoolers. The interaction between family SES and parent–child relationship was significant only for children with Val/Val genotypes. In contrast, this interaction was not significant for children carrying the Met/Met or Val/Met genotypes. The results of the present study highlight the complex interplay of multiple factors, including both distal and proximal family environments and individual genetic influences, that affect children's EF. These findings provide new insights into the multifaceted determinants of children's cognitive development.

Difficulties with emotion regulation are implicated in internalizing and externalizing disorders common in adolescence. Cognitive flexibility is foundational for emotion regulation. Prior studies examining neural patterns of adolescent emotion regulation have mainly used emotionally-valenced stimuli to induce negative emotions. However, adolescents' neural recovery after frustrative non-reward, a novel paradigm engaging both emotion regulation and reward networks, and the role of cognitive flexibility during this recovery period remain unexplored. Twenty-seven treatment-seeking adolescents with varying emotion regulation abilities (mean age = 14.53 years, SD = 1.76) completed a monetary incentive delay task modified for frustration induction, where rewards were blocked after 60% of hit trials, differentiating reward blocked v. received conditions. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale and NIH Toolbox Dimensional Change Card Sort measured emotion regulation and cognitive flexibility, respectively. Whole-brain ANCOVAs examined associations between emotion regulation and ventral striatum connectivity during the recovery period following reward feedback, with cognitive flexibility as a moderator. Among clusters across temporo- and fronto-striatal networks, adolescents exhibiting more positive relationships between emotion regulation and cognitive flexibility demonstrated less connectivity after reward received v. blocked. Opposite patterns (greater connectivity after reward received v. blocked) were observed in adolescents exhibiting more negative relationships between emotion regulation and cognitive flexibility. Our findings support a cognitive flexibility-related pathway to emotion regulation and a compensatory, noncognitive flexibility-related pathway. These mechanisms may inform novel interventions for improving adolescent emotion regulation.

Parenting behavior is thought to be undergirded by internal processes, including autonomic and neuroendocrine responsivity. Parents are school-aged children's primary sources of support and guidance, underscoring the importance of identifying proximal influences on parenting behavior in middle childhood. However, the literature on physiological correlates of parenting behaviors in school-aged children has yet to be comprehensively reviewed. To address this gap, we conducted a pre-registered systematic review with the aims of assessing physiological responsivity and its correlates at both within- and between-person levels of analysis and during stressful and non-stressful tasks. We identified 23 studies that described parents’ physiological responsivity in either general autonomic, parasympathetic, or hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis functioning and associations between physiological responsivity and observed parenting behavior among families with children ages 5–12 years. Overall, the results suggested that parents’ physiological responses during parent–child interactions varied within and across tasks, though parents typically demonstrated stress responses to child performance challenges. The links between physiological responsivity and parenting behavior depended on family risk status and analytic method (e.g., between- vs. within-level analyses). On the basis of the present results, we suggest several potential directions for future research (e.g., attention to dynamic and multisystem processes) to elucidate biobehavioral processes implicated in parenting.

Socioeconomic inequalities affect health via multiple biological, behavioral, and social pathways. Specifically, low socioeconomic status (SES) negatively impacts children's intelligence quotient (IQ). Most data on this topic comes from high-inequality countries such as the United States. Here, we investigate the relation between SES, IQ, and attention and how it might be mediated by early-childhood factors in 10- to 13-year-old children in Poland, a country with relatively low inequality and a medium GDP level. Executive attention was measured using a go/no-go task. We found that parental education significantly influenced IQ and attention. Low SES children scored on average 3 IQ points lower than high SES children and had significantly longer reaction times and d’ (discrimination accuracies). Family SES had a clear non-mediated impact on IQ and an overall effect on attention. On the other hand, smoking/alcohol during pregnancy and breastfeeding, while all correlated with SES, did not mediate its effects on IQ or attention. We conclude that the impact of SES on cognition is considerable even in a low-inequality country such as Poland, and in our population it cannot be explained by these early-life factors.

Trial Registration: Clinical Trials Identifier: NCT04574414