“The influence of maternal prenatal stress trajectories on offspring brain and behaviors and new directions in precision brain mapping in infancy”
Damien Fair, PA-C, PhD
Redleaf Endowed Director, Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain
Professor, Institute of Child Development, College of Education and Human Development
Professor, Department of Pediatrics, Medical School, University of Minnesota

Abstract: The period from conception to birth confers rapid brain development that occurs in an environment exclusively defined by maternal physiological and psychological health.  Perturbations to this environment can alter fetal brain development potentially impacting long-term infant health outcomes. The majority of studies that examine maternal distress during pregnancy primarily consider the magnitude of distress as the ‘risk factor;’ however, psychosocial stress, particularly in pregnancy, is dynamic and variable. As a result, it remains unclear which aspects of stress most strongly impact offspring development – is it simply the scale of stress during pregnancy, or does the trajectory matter as well?  Under this context the present discussion aims to examine heterogeneity in maternal prenatal/perinatal distress by defining individual longitudinal trajectories, and their impact on offspring brain and behavior. We also highlight and identify new directions in personalized, precision infant brain imaging which we believe will be critical to characterizing such brain-behavior associations in the future.

Free and open to the public. Interested in attending? Email Conte@Harvard.edu for zoom info