Parents develop, too: Maternal and Paternal Neural Reorganization Across the Perinatal Period

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

In the last half decade, the field of developmental science has increasingly recognized pregnancy as a time of critical changes to the brains of women transitioning to the role of mother. Breakthrough work focused primarily on volumetric changes across pregnancy to neural structures involved in social perception (e.g., Hoekzema et al., 2017). However, evidence increasingly suggests that likely structural and functional changes are broader than initially thought, are not limited to mothers, and reflective of both biological (i.e., hormonal) and environmental (i.e., experiential) factors even prior to pregnancy. This symposium will integrate innovative work examining the role of hormonal fluctuations in maternal neurodevelopment during pregnancy (Presenter 1), neural adaptations to the transition to parenthood in fathers (Presenter 2), the influence of prenatal depressive symptoms on postnatal maternal neural responses to infants (Presenter 3), and the role of paternal experiences in predicting neural adaptations to parenting in fathers (Presenter 4). Cumulatively, talks will both offer hypotheses for mechanisms of perinatal neurodevelopment and also extend previously-demonstrated implications for both parent and infant outcomes. Given the importance of parent-child dyads and the influence of the parental environment on development, better understanding neural plasticity associated with pregnancy and/or the transition to parenthood stands to extend and improve our conceptualizations and understanding of developmental processes.

Sub Unit

• Biological Processes: Neuroscience and Genetics

Chairs

• Rebecca J Brooker, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Jessica Bernard, Texas A&M University - College Station

Individual Presentations

• Medial temporal subregion volume changes observed over the course of a human pregnancy - Presenting Author: Caitlin M. Taylor, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA; Elizabeth R. Chrastil, University of California, Irvine, CA; Emily G. Jacobs, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Development of the Paternal Brain in Humans throughout Pregnancy - Presenting Author: Francoise Diaz-Rojas, Kyoto University; Michiko Matsunaga, Kyoto University; Yukari Tanaka, Kansai University; Takefumi Kikusui; Kazutaka Mogi; Miho Nagasawa; Kohei Asano; Nobuhito Abe; Masako Myowa, Kyoto University

• The associations between prenatal depressive symptoms and the neural and psychological attachment to infants among birthing parents. - Presenting Author: Pilyoung Kim, University of Denver; Shannon Powers, University of Denver; Jacqueline Martinez, University of Denver; Tom Yeh, University of Colorado-Boulder

• Left hippocampal volume across the transition to first-time fatherhood - Presenting Author: Darby E. Saxbe, University of Southern California; Magdalena Martinez Garcia, Hospital Gregorio Marañón; Sofia Cardenas, University of Southern California; Yael Haya Waizman, University of Southern California; Susanna Carmona, Hospital Gregorio Marañón