Prenatal exposure to maternal depression is related to the functional connectivity organization underlying emotion perception in 8-10-month-old infants - Preliminary findings

N Rotem-Kohavi; N Virji-Babul; T F Oberlander

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101545

Prenatal exposure to maternal depression is related to the functional connectivity organization underlying emotion perception in 8-10-month-old infants - Preliminary findings

Infant Behav Dev. 2021 May:63:101545. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101545. Epub 2021 Mar 10.

Authors

N Rotem-Kohavi¹, N Virji-Babul², T F Oberlander³

Affiliations

¹ University of British Columbia, Graduate Program in Neuroscience, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
² Department of Physical Therapy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
³ BC Children's Hospital Research Institute, Vancouver, Canada; Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada; School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Electronic address: toberlander@bcchr.ca.

PMID: 33713910
DOI: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101545

Abstract

Emotion perception is critical for infant's social development. Mother's mood during pregnancy has been associated with infants' emotional developmental risks. Graphtheory analysis was applied on EEG data recorded from 35, 8-to-10-month-old-infants prenatally exposed to high or low depressed symptoms, while viewing happy and sad faces. We found an interaction between group and emotion such that infants exposed to high-depressed-symptoms showed higher modularity - reflecting reduced perceptual-dynamics - for viewing happy emotions compared to sad. The opposite was observed for infants exposed to low-depressive-symptoms. These preliminary findings suggest that prenatal depressive mood may shape early functional organization for viewing emotional faces.

Keywords: EEG; Emotion perception; Graph theory analysis; Infancy; Maternal depression.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Depression*
Emotions
Facial Expression
Female
Humans
Infant
Infant Behavior
Perception
Pregnancy
Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects*