Exploring the association between perinatal maternal mental health, infant brain development and childhood mental health outcomes - a multi-context s

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During or after pregnancy, up to 20% of women will experience mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety1. Poor maternal mental health is likely to affect the care that the infant receives as well as infant-carer interactions, with profound effects on offspring outcomes, including cognitive, social, behavioural and emotional development and even psychopathology2-4. Biological changes have also been observed in children of mothers who experienced perinatal mental health problems, including elevated cortisol reactivity5,6, and structural and functional alterations in brain regions involved in cognitive-emotional responses to stress, reward sensitivity and socio-emotional function7-9. Such alterations could contribute to increasing children's vulnerability to developing psychopathology. This project will evaluate data from typically and atypically developing children (age 2-11 years, n~2000), recruited in the UK and in Singapore, collected from birth and throughout childhood at different time points. These data include details of brain structure and function (obtained with magnetic resonance imaging or MRI), perinatal maternal mental health, psychiatric family history, life events, parenting style, and several aspects of child development including, motor, language, cognitive, mental health and socio-emotional outcomes. An increased understanding of how specific brain structural and functional alterations influence the known links between perinatal maternal mental health and early child development will elucidate the mechanisms underlying the transgenerational transmission of mental health disorders. Furthermore, the study of long-term effects of maternal mental health on child cognition and behaviour in diverse geographical settings may inform context-specific interventions to support maternal mental health and promote child development, as well as facilitate mother-infant relationships. To use a whole-brain approach to investigate brain structural and functional connectivity alterations as mediators between maternal mental ill-health and child vulnerability to developing psychopathology. Participants will be children assessed as part of large longitudinal studies in the UK and Singapore. These are the Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP; http://www.developingconnectome.org/), which followed-up over 1000 infants from birth to age 18 months, the Evaluation of Preterm Imaging study (ePrime), which followed-up 500 children who were born very preterm (<33 weeks of gestation) at various time points up to age 10, and the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes study (GUSTO; https://www.gusto.sg), which investigated 1200 mothers and children and followed-up 500 participants up to ten time-points up to the age of 10. These studies have collected comparable data on MRI imaging at birth (dHCP, ePRIME, GUSTO) and in childhood (ePRIME, GUSTO), perinatal maternal mental health (e.g., Edinburgh Prenatal Depression Scale), psychiatric family history, life events, parenting style, and child development including gross and fine motor, language, cognitive, behavioural and socio-emotional outcomes.