The McCarrison Society - NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition

NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition

Article Index
NL 40/1: Special Generating Healthy Brains Edition
Chairman's comments
GHB Special Report On The McCarrison Society
GHB:Report by Conference Organiser Rev Simon House, MA
GHB: Preconception to late adolescence:
GHB: From past to present: evolution and epigenetics
GHB: CLEAVE LECTURE Nutrition, the brain and mental ill health
GHB: Our changing diet; deficits and disorders
GHB: Genomic imprinting for brain development and behaviour
GHB: 'Brainfoods': Modulating brain structure and function
GHB: The effects of maternal anxiety or stress during pregnancy
GHB: Cornerstones in the Psychobiological Development of Mankind:
GHB: A psycho-soma integration perspective
GHB: 'New Parenting', psychotherapy, prenatal
GHB: Attention deficit disorders
GHB: Priorities in Research Funding
GHB:Into the future; avoiding the cost of folly
GHB: References
News
Mind What You Eat
McCarrison meeting with Sustain
Future Events

Page 11 of 22

GHB: The effects of maternal anxiety or stress during pregnancy on the foetus and the long term development of the child.

Professor Vivette Glover, Perinatal Psychobiology, Imperial College London, presented the increasing evidence from independent large prospective studies that maternal stress/anxiety during pregnancy can affect foetal brain development, with adverse effects on the child’s emotional, behavioural and cognitive development.

We talk about foetal programming and predictive adaptive response. Environmental influences on the mother are preparing the child in her womb for the external environment it is likely to inhabit. This is different from the genetic changes and mutations that will be effective for thousands of generations. Their seriousness is now well enough established to feature in an American Child Health strategic plan 2005-10.

Animal studies have pointed to factors to observe in humans. Antenatal maternal stress in rats leads to anxiety in the offspring. It can alter laterality – right-handedness etc. – sexuality, and disrupt the circadian rhythm including sleep pattern, a prolonged corticosteroid influence. Prenatal stress reduces the animal’s later negative feedback, the calming effect of cortisol, by reducing the cortisol receptors in the hippocampus.

In monkeys likewise, maternal prenatal stress leaves the offspring with a lower attention span and more anxiety. There are greater cortisol responses, but imaging reveals more dopamine receptors to be affected by that stress neurotransmitter. So there is objective evidence of mammalian prenatal stress effects on offspring.

Dr. Glover’s human research has mainly related to the ALSPAC program. In a group of anxious mothers, a simple arithmetic exercise met with a rise in foetal heart-beat, showing that maternal stress clearly affects the foetus. The strongest effects discerned of maternal prenatal stress on the offspring were relationship problems, particularly emotional cruelty and separation; others included alcohol and smoking. The strength of effect was stronger from stress at 32 weeks prenatally than 18 weeks, and resulted in double the levels of the offspring’s hyperactivity, and emotional and conduct disorders. This reflected children’s high waking level of cortisol.

Studies show that stress acts on the hypothalamus to produce corticotrophin releasing hormone, which in turn acts on the pituitary gland to produce adreno-corticotrophic hormone. This stimulates the adrenal gland to secrete adrenaline, which both stirs the system to deal with emergency, and also releases cortisol for negative feedback to the hippocampus to stabilise the system. Yet both maternal and foetal cortisol are a positive stimulus on placental CRH.

These results suggest the importance of detecting and treating affective disorder during pregnancy, both for the direct benefit to the mother herself, and particularly to help reduce later development of behavioural and other problems in children.

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