Infants of mothers with higher physiological stress show alterations in brain function.

ABSTRACT: Chronic stress has been increasingly linked with aberrations in children's behavioral, cognitive, and social development, yet the effect of chronic physiological stress on neural development during the first year of life is largely unknown. The present study aims to link a physiological index of chronic stress (maternal hair cortisol concentration) to maturational differences in infant functional brain development during the first year of life. Participants were 94 mother-infant dyads. To index chronic physiological stress, maternal hair samples were assayed for the previous three months' cortisol output. To examine the development of brain function during the first year of life, six-to-twelve-month-old infants (N = 94) completed a resting electroencephalography (EEG) recording. Infants of

SUBMITTER: Troller-Renfree SV 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9126078 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature