Objectives: To investigate the preventive potential of the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis as it pertains to emotion dysregulation and psychopathology by: i) elucidating the impact of modifiable perinatal risk factors, and ii) examining whether a postnatal intervention can improve infant emotion regulation.
Methods: Studies 1 and 2 used data from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) cohort and the Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) cohort to examine if modifiable perinatal risk factors (including prenatal diet quality) confounded the link between prenatal metabolic complications and offspring psychopathology. Study 3 used MIREC data to examine if prenatal diet quality was linked to a biomarker of emotion regulation in infants (autonomic nervous system (ANS) function). Studies 4 and 5 used data from 40 infants of mothers diagnosed with postpartum depression (PPD) and 40 healthy control infants matched on infant age sex and socioeconomic status. These studies examined if infant emotion regulation (Study 4) and mother-infant physiological synchrony (a marker of dyadic emotion regulation-Study 5) improved following maternal cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for PPD.
Results: In Studies 1 and 2, prenatal diet quality accounted for significant variance in the links between prenatal metabolic complications and offspring psychopathology. In Study 3, poor prenatal diet quality was associated with adverse ANS development in offspring. In Studies 4 and 5, infants exhibited more adaptive emotion regulation and mother-infant synchrony improved following maternal receipt of CBT for PPD.
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Conclusions: Elucidating the impact of modifiable perinatal risk factors on offspring psychopathology provides meaningful targets for intervention, and postnatal interventions may improve offspring emotion regulation and could reduce the risk of psychopathology. This work highlights the importance of the perinatal period as a time during which modifiable risk factors can be identified and intervened upon to reduce mental disorder risk across the lifespan. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Healthy brain development is important for health and success in life. However, risk factors such as the mother’s poor physical and mental health during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year can increase the risk of emotion and behaviour problems in offspring. Therefore, the objectives of this thesis were to i) identify links between modifiable pre and postnatal risk factors and poorer offspring brain development and ii) determine if intervening on one of these risk factors might improve offspring brain development. Results from this thesis show that an unhealthy maternal diet in pregnancy was linked to more offspring emotion, behaviour, and brain development problems and that treating postpartum depression in mothers may improve offspring brain development. This work suggests that identifying and intervening on modifiable risk factors is important to improve early brain development and may prevent the development of mental disorders later in life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/26015 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Krzeczkowski, John |
| Contributors | Van Lieshout, Ryan, Neuroscience |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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