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History of childbirths relates to region-specific brain aging patterns in middle and older-aged women

De Lange, A-M; Barth, C; Kaufmann, T; Anatürk, M; Suri, S; Ebmeier, K; Westlye, L; (2020) History of childbirths relates to region-specific brain aging patterns in middle and older-aged women. BioRxiv: Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA. Green open access

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Abstract

Pregnancy involves maternal brain adaptations, but little is known about how parity influences women’s brain aging trajectories later in life. In this study, we replicated previous findings showing less apparent brain aging in women with a history of childbirths, and identified regional brain aging patterns linked to parity in 19,787 middle and older-aged women. Using novel applications of brain-age prediction methods, we found that a higher number of previous childbirths was linked to less apparent brain aging in striatal and limbic regions. The strongest effect was found in the accumbens – a key region in the mesolimbic reward system, which plays an important role in maternal behavior. While only prospective longitudinal studies would be conclusive, our findings indicate that subcortical brain modulations during pregnancy and postpartum may be traceable decades after childbirth.

Type: Working / discussion paper
Title: History of childbirths relates to region-specific brain aging patterns in middle and older-aged women
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1101/2020.05.08.084616
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.08.084616
Language: English
Additional information: The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Computer Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10117919
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