Jones, A;
Osmond, C;
Godfrey, KM;
Phillips, DIW;
(2011)
Evidence for Developmental Programming of Cerebral Laterality in Humans.
PLOS ONE
, 6
(2)
, Article e17071. 10.1371/journal.pone.0017071.
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Abstract
Adverse fetal environments are associated with depression, reduced cognitive ability and increased stress responsiveness in later life, but underlying mechanisms are unknown. Environmental pressures on the fetus, resulting from variations in placental function and maternal nutrition, health and stress might alter neurodevelopment, promoting the development of some brain regions over others. As asymmetry of cerebral activity, with greater right hemisphere activity, has been associated with psychopathology, we hypothesized that regional specialization during fetal life might be reflected persistently in the relative activity of the cerebral hemispheres. We tested this hypothesis in 140 healthy 8-9 year-old children, using tympanic membrane temperature to assess relative blood flow to the cerebral hemispheres at rest and following psychosocial stress (Trier Social Stress Test for Children). Their birth weight and placental weight had already been measured when their mothers took part in a previous study of pregnancy outcomes. We found that children who had a smaller weight at birth had evidence of greater blood flow to the right hemisphere than to the left hemisphere (r = -.09, P = .29 at rest; r = -.18, P = .04 following stress). This finding was strengthened if the children had a relatively low birth weight for their placental weight (r = -.17, P = .05 at rest; r = -.31, P = .0005 following stress). Our findings suggest that lateralization of cerebral activity is influenced persistently by early developmental experiences, with possible consequences for long-term neurocognitive function.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Evidence for Developmental Programming of Cerebral Laterality in Humans |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1371/journal.pone.0017071 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0017071 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2011 Jones et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This work was supported by a National Institute for Health Research (UK) Specialist Biomedical Research Centre grant (09CC04 to A.J.) and a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) grant (1 R01 HD41107-01 to D.I.W.P.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. |
| Keywords: | RESTRICTED MATERNAL NUTRITION, TYMPANIC MEMBRANE THERMOMETRY, PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS, HEMISPHERIC ACTIVATION, ADULT LIFE, BLOOD-FLOW, DEPRESSION, BRAIN, PREGNANCY, FETAL |
| UCL classification: | UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1298194 |
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