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Structural features of the developing brain seem to be highly heritable. For example, in a twin study on 8-year-old typically developing children we found heritability estimates explaining around 60% of the variation in total brain volume. Nevertheless, the brain is also inherently plastic and thus it is not surprising that environmental influences explain some 30% of the variation (Van der Meulen et al., in press). Caregiving styles of parents have often been suggested to be central to the shared environment making children within a family more alike. The crucial question in the current study is what components of a broadly defined construct of parenting across the first 10 years predict differences in structural brain features at 10 years of age.
The study is embedded in the Generation R Study, a population-based cohort from fetal life onwards in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Women with an expected delivery date between April 2002 and January 2006 were eligible to participate in the study (Kooijman et al., 2016). The children were invited for a neuroimaging session at the age of ten years. Almost 4,000 children underwent a neuroimaging assessment (White et al. 2017). Global and specific volumetric measures, including limbic morphology, as well as white matter microstructure were assessed with magnetic resonance imaging, including individual tracts related to the limbic system (Muetzel et al., 2017).
A body of both published and ongoing work in Generation R has identified putative relationships between parental influences and structural brain morphology and connectivity. For example, higher levels of parental sensitivity in early childhood were associated with larger total brain volume and gray matter (GM) volume (Kok et al., 2015), and with possibly delayed amygdala–medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) connectivity development (Thijssen et al., 2017). Furthermore, we found that maternal depression across the first 10 years of life is associated with smaller total GM volume and lower global fractional anisotrophy (Zou et al., in prep). Work on the relationship between harsh parenting and limbic morphology is in progress (Cortes et al., in prep). It is unclear whether these different antecedents predict specific aspects of brain structure or whether each adds unique predicted variance to global brain volumetric and microstructural measures.
In this presentation a global construct of parenting will be related to GM volumetric measures as well as white matter microstructure, controlling for confounders. Primary focus is on limbic areas and its connections with other brain regions, in particular the prefrontal cortex. The global parenting construct includes prenatal parenting, in particular prenatal psychosocial stress, as well as postnatal assessments, covering symptoms of anxiety and depression. Furthermore, parental sensitivity, divorce, family conflict and harsh parenting in the first 10 years will be included. An aggregated ‘general parenting factor’ as well as specific parenting components in specific time windows will be examined for their prediction of variance in brain morphology. This population-based cohort study with typically developing families might be considered a baseline for studies in at-risk or clinical groups.
The Generation R Study Team
Marinus H van IJzendoorn, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Presenting Author
Sandra Thijssen, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Non-Presenting Author
Andrea Patricia Cortes Hidalgo, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam
Non-Presenting Author
Ryan Muetzel, University Medical Center Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Non-Presenting Author
Marian J Bakermans-Kranenburg, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Non-Presenting Author
Charlotte Cecil, University of Bristol
Non-Presenting Author
Pauline Jansen, Erasmus MC-University Medical Center Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Non-Presenting Author
Henning Tiemeier, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston
Non-Presenting Author
Tonya White, University Medical Center Rotterdam
Non-Presenting Author