Early Life Events: Shedding Light on Neurobiological Mechanisms

The influence of early life environment on brain development. The figure summarizes the studies that composed the Research Topic: Early Life Events: Shedding Light on Neurobiological Mechanisms.

Editorial

17 May 2023

Editorial: Early life events: shedding light on neurobiological mechanisms

Randriely Merscher Sobreira de Lima

Natividade de Sá Couto Pereira

Carla Dalmaz

and

Danusa Mar Arcego

4,465 views

2 citations

Editors

Carla Dalmaz

Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul

Natividade de Sá Couto Pereira

University of Minho

Danusa Mar Arcego

McGill University

Impact

Mini Review

13 April 2023

Neurobiological mechanisms involved in maternal deprivation-induced behaviours relevant to psychiatric disorders

Natália Cristina Zanta

, 1 more and

Deborah Suchecki

2,473 views

2 citations

Boxplots demonstrate the anatomically weighted functional connectivity strength in children of mothers with a high adversity score (orange boxes) compared to children of mothers with a lower adversity score (blue boxes). Significant differences between HA and HC are shown within the (A) DMN between the PCC and L-AG (B) FPN between the L-IFG and the LG/CER (C) FPN between the R-SFG and the LG/CER (D) LIM between the R-STG and the L-STG (E) VAN between the R-aOFG and L-LG (F) DAN between the R-pOFG and L-ITG. adversity, children exposed to maternal adversity, control, healthy control group, The asterisks indicate a statistically significant difference in the ROI awFC between groups at *p < 0.05 and **p < 0.01. DMN, default mode network; FPN, frontoparietal network; LIM, limbic network; VAN, ventral attention network; DAN, dorsal attention network; L, left; R, right; IFG, inferior frontal gyrus; LG/CER, lingual gyrus/cerebellum; SFG, superior frontal gyrus; STG, superior temporal gyrus; aOFG, anterior orbitofrontal gyrus; LG, lingual gyrus; pOFG, posterior orbitofrontal gyrus; ITG, inferior temporal gyrus.

Original Research

16 March 2023

Examining resting-state network connectivity in children exposed to perinatal maternal adversity using anatomically weighted functional connectivity (awFC) analyses; A preliminary report

Sondos Ayyash

, 8 more and

Geoffrey B. Hall

2,632 views

1 citations

Insensitive caregiving predicted the difference between Angry and Happy memory during the item-space condition (B = 2.451, se = 0.969, p = 0.014, 95% CI [0.572, 4.340]), as well as memory for Angry (but not Happy) items [B = –2.203, se = 0.551, p < 0.001, 95% CI (–3.264,–1.094)].

Original Research

16 February 2023

Variation in maternal sensitivity and the development of memory biases in preschoolers

Anne Rifkin-Graboi

, 4 more and

Kerry Lee

4,041 views

3 citations

Original Research

08 December 2022

Altered cognition and anxiety in adolescent offspring whose mothers underwent different-pattern maternal sleep deprivation, and cognition link to hippocampal expressions of Bdnf and Syt-1

Ru-Meng Wei

, 6 more and

Gui-Hai Chen

Background: Inadequate sleep during pregnancy negatively affects the neural development of offspring. Previous studies have focused on the continuous sleep deprivation (CSD) paradigm, but the sleep pattern during late pregnancy is usually fragmented.

Objective: To compare the effects of CSD and fragmented sleep deprivation (FSD) in late pregnancy on emotion, cognition, and expression of synaptic plasticity-related proteins in offspring mice.

Methods: Pregnant CD-1 mice were either subjected to 3/6 h of CSD/FSD during gestation days 15–21, while those in the control group were left untreated. After delivery, the offspring were divided into five groups, i.e., control (CON), short or long CSD (CSD3h, CSD6h), and short or long FSD (FSD3h, FSD6h). When the offspring were 2 months old, the anxiety-like behavior level was tested using the open field (OF) and elevated plus maze (EPM) test, and spatial learning and memory were evaluated using the Morris water maze (MWM) test. The expression of hippocampal of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (Bdnf) and synaptotagmin-1 (Syt-1) was determined using RT-PCR and western blotting.

Results: The CSD6h, FSD3h, and FSD6h had longer latency, fewer center times in the OF test, less open arms time and fewer numbers of entries in the open arms of the EPM, longer learning distance swam and lower memory percentage of distance swam in the target quadrant in the MWM test, and decreased BDNF and increased Syt-1 mRNA and protein levels in the hippocampus. Compared to the CSD6h, the FSD3h and FSD6h had longer distance swam, a lower percentage of distance swam in the target quadrant, decreased BDNF, and increased Syt-1 mRNA and protein levels in the hippocampus.

Conclusion: The results suggested that maternal sleep deprivation during late pregnancy impairs emotion and cognition in offspring, and FSD worsened the cognitive performance to a higher extent than CSD. The observed cognitive impairment could be associated with the expression of altered hippocampal of Bdnf and Syt-1 genes.

3,971 views

6 citations