Prenatal Cannabis use and Neural Responses to Infant Cries

• In Event: Prenatal Substance Use: Risk and Protective Mechanism for Birthing Parent-Infant Attachments

Abstract

Introduction: The transition from pregnancy to parenthood accompanies neural network attunements to infant cries (Witteman et al., 2019). Cannabis is quickly becoming one of the most used substances during pregnancy (“Committee Opinion No. 722,” 2017; Martin et al., 2015), and yet there is limited knowledge on the effects of how cannabis use in isolation may impact neural responses to infant cries postpartum (Crume et al., 2022). While there is a lack of literature on cannabis use in isolation, current fMRI literature postpartum on all substances, has found both reductions in activation to infant cries (Landi et al., 2011), and no differences in activation between own versus other cries (Rutherford et al., 2020). Using fMRI, we investigated the postpartum neural response to infant cries among cannabis users during pregnancy. Hypothesis: This study hypothesized that using cannabis (CU) during pregnancy would dampen response to cries and show no difference in response between own versus other cries when compared to non-cannabis users (NC). Methods: Participants were recruited as a part of a larger project during their first trimester of pregnancy and followed through each trimester for cannabis usage until about 2~4 weeks postpartum when the fMRI visit was conducted. Study population: The final sample included 55 non-cannabis use postpartum participants, and 29 cannabis using participants from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds. CU was defined as either a positive urine drug screen, self-reported, or through the Timeline Followback Scale (Robinson et al., 2014) at any timepoint during pregnancy. NC did not use any cannabis at any time during their pregnancy. Groups did not differ on depression or anxiety symptomatology at 1 month postpartum. The infant cry task consisted of four 20 second conditions, listening to their own baby cry, control cry (same cry was used across participants), matched white noise to their own baby cry, and matched white noise to the control cry. The task consisted of 2 separate runs for a total of 20.6 minutes. A group-level fMRI analysis using Analysis of Functional Neuroimages software’s (AFNI version 21.1.01) (Cox, 1996) 3dLME to create a whole-brain linear mixed effects model with cannabis as the between subjects factor, and sound (cry, white noise) and condition (own baby, other baby) as the within subjects factor with cluster sizes larger than 30 voxels, p >.05 corrected. Results: Two clusters were identified for significant group differences: one in the right cingulate gyrus (RCG), and the other in the right middle temporal gyrus (RMTG). Across each cluster, CU had significantly more activation to cry sounds than NC (RCG: t(82) = -2.61, p = .005; RMTG: t(82)=-3.53, p <.001). Discussion: Both of these regions are important for auditory recognition and shifting attention toward the cry (Witteman et al., 2019). Higher activation in the RMTG among CU was associated with lower non-hostility scores on the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale (Condon & Corkindale, 1998) suggesting more feelings of irritability and distress towards infant (r(27) = -.57, p =.003). This may suggest increased effort in perceptions and attention of infant cries effecting infant interactions.

Authors

• Shannon Powers, University of Denver
  Presenting Author

• Genevieve Patterson, University of Denver

• Jacqueline Martinez, University of Denver

• Tom Yeh, University of Colorado-Boulder

• Pilyoung Kim, University of Denver