Maternal trait anxiety symptoms, frontolimbic resting-state functional connectivity, and cognitive development in infancy

Abstract

Exposure to maternal anxiety symptoms during infancy has been associated with difficulties in development and greater risk for developing anxiety later in life. Although previous studies have examined associations between prenatal maternal distress, infant brain development, and developmental outcomes, it is still largely unclear if there are associations between postnatal anxiety, infant brain development, and cognitive development in infancy. In this study, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the association between maternal anxiety symptoms and resting-state functional connectivity in the first year of life. We also examine the association between frontolimbic functional connectivity and infant cognitive development. The sample consisted of 21 infants (mean age = 24.15 months, SD = 4.17) that were scanned during their natural sleep using. We test the associations between maternal trait anxiety symptoms and amygdala-anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) functional connectivity, a neural circuit implicated in early life stress exposure. We also test the associations between amygdala-ACC connectivity and cognitive development. We found a significant negative association between maternal trait anxiety symptoms and left amygdala-right ACC functional connectivity (p < .05, false discovery rate corrected). We found a significant negative association between left amygdala-right ACC functional connectivity and infant cognitive development (p < .05). These findings have potential implications for understanding the role of postpartum maternal anxiety symptoms in functional brain and cognitive development in infancy.

Keywords: functional magnetic resonance imaging; mood; perinatal; postpartum.

FIGURE 1

(a) Depiction of the anatomical regions of interest from the UNC Infant 1 Year Atlas that were used to extract functional connectivity time series. The figure shows the left amygdala region of interest (on the left) and the right ACC region of interest (on the right). (b) Scatter plot of the relationship between maternal trait anxiety symptoms and infant left amygdala–right ACC functional connectivity. (c) Scatter plot of the relationship between infant left amygdala–right ACC functional connectivity and cognitive composite scores from the Bayley-III measured at the home visit (mean age of 13.95 months)