ABSTRACT Although pregnancy‐related sleep disturbances are known to affect maternal health and fetal development, only recently have studies focused on the impact of maternal sleep quality on fetal brain development and infant social‐emotional outcomes. The present study expands upon this work and examines associations between prenatal sleep, brain regions implicated in emotional regulation and psychopathology (hippocampus and amygdala), and infant negative affect at 6 months. In a sample of 103 pregnant people from the Brain and Early Experience Study, maternal sleep was assessed around 28 weeks of gestation using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). At 2 weeks postpartum, infant brain anatomy was assessed via MRI, and infant negative affect was measured at 6 months using the Infant Behavior Questionnaire. Analyses revealed that poor prenatal sleep quality (global PSQI score) did not significantly predict neonatal hippocampal or amygdala volume. However, exploratory analyses of PSQI subscales found that greater prenatal sleep disturbances were associated with smaller right hippocampal volume in neonates. Mediation analyses indicated that prenatal sleep disturbances were indirectly associated with higher infant negative affect via reduced right hippocampal volume, and this indirect effect was moderated by child sex, such that it was significant among females but not males. These findings highlight the importance of maternal sleep quality in shaping early brain development, particularly in girls, and underscore the long‐term implications for emotional and social development. Promoting optimal sleep during pregnancy may foster healthier emotional outcomes and social functioning in children.

Evidence from rodent studies highlights the mother as a safety cue that regulates fear and biology. However, when infant rats are exposed to rough maternal care (i.e., threat), their brains show atypical patterns of activity in response to maternal cues. In humans, childhood adversity (i.e., international adoption, involvement with Child Protective Services) is also associated with differential neural responses to caregiver cues. However, to date, no studies have tested the hypothesis that childhood adversity characterized by threat (e.g., physical abuse, domestic violence) influences neural responses to caregiver cues in children, as suggested by the rodent literature. This study investigates associations between threat experiences and neural responses to caregiver cues in young children using fMRI. The sample included 148 young children (52.02% Male; M age = 6.45 years). Across the entire sample, children demonstrated heightened recruitment in regions associated with salience detection, visual processing, and social cognition in response to caregiver cues (relative to stranger cues). Moreover, threat experiences were associated with greater recruitment of the insula in response to caregiver cues (relative to stranger cues), even when controlling for deprivation experiences. The present findings contribute to a growing field of research linking childhood adversity to brain function, suggesting that experiences of threat may disrupt how children process caregiver cues at the neural level. Moreover, these results are in line with rodent studies that underscore threat as a potential disruptor of dyadic interaction between children and their caregivers.

Background Silicone bands offer a non-invasive method for measuring environmental chemicals; however, their feasibility with young children is uncertain. This mixed-methods study examines toddler compliance with silicone bands, identifies predictors of compliance, and offers recommendations for research. Methods Children wore silicone wrist and ankle bands for 1 week; parents completed daily diaries capturing wear time of each band (hours) to indicate compliance (focal outcome). Mothers completed questionnaires capturing family characteristics and child cognitive and behavioral characteristics. Compliance and its associations with family and child characteristics were examined using descriptive, comparative, and associative statistics, and predictive modeling. Comments provided by parents in diaries and research assistants’ feedback were summarized to inform recommendations for future studies. Results Children ( n = 115, 28–39 months) tended to be highly compliant with wearing both bands (56%) or the ankle band only (23%), as reflected by a median of 11–12 hours/day of wear time over the week. Compliance was higher for ankle than wrist bands ( p -value <0.001). Wear time was not associated with child age, sex, associated clothing when wearing the band, or socioeconomic status ( p -values >0.05). Child language and anxiety were positively associated with wristband compliance ( p -values ≤0.038), whereas higher behavioral inhibition and lower effortful control were associated with higher ankle band compliance ( p -values ≤0.016). Qualitative data suggest improving band appeal and resolving sizing issues could improve compliance. Conclusions Results support the feasibility of deploying silicone bands with toddler-aged children. Studies using child-worn bands should account for hourly wear time, as compliance may predict both chemical exposure levels and child characteristics.

The current study examined associations between the quality of children's social interactions with their teachers and peers and their concurrent parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) activity in the early education classroom. Data were collected from 80 children (Mage = 4.91 years, 50% female, 50% White). The quality of children's social interaction with their teachers and peers was assessed across five sessions using the inCLASS while changes in children's parasympathetic activity were tracked. Analyses revealed that children increased PNS activity during sessions in which they interacted more positively with their teachers, whereas they decreased activity during sessions in which they interacted more positively with their peers. Children who interacted more positively with their peers across sessions also exhibited larger cross-session reductions in parasympathetic tone.

Childhood is a period of peak developmental plasticity, involving drastic changes in the maturation of the neural circuitry underlying fear learning. Disruption and atypical development of fear learning are candidate mechanisms underlying child psychopathology. While there is a lack of understanding behind the maturation of fear learning systems in humans, rodent studies in this area delineate the normative development of fear learning systems early in life, and the effects of early threatening and fearful experiences on this developmental trajectory. Here, we review the rodent literature on developmental fear learning, as well as human studies that show translational convergence in typical development and children exposed to early life threat. We identify several gaps in research, including the role that caregivers play in regulating fear learning at different developmental stages and the intergenerational transmission of learned fear. Finally, we provide recommendations on how to address these gaps in a way that would improve our developmental frameworks of fear learning.

The prenatal period is a critical developmental juncture with enduring effects on offspring health trajectories. An individual's gut microbiome is associated with health and developmental outcomes across the lifespan. Prenatal stress can disrupt an infant's microbiome, thereby increasing susceptibility to adverse outcomes. This cross-species systematic review investigates whether maternal prenatal stress affects the offspring's gut microbiome. The study analyzes 19 empirical, peer-reviewed research articles, including humans, rodents, and non-human primates, that included prenatal stress as a primary independent variable and offspring gut microbiome characteristics as an outcome variable. Prenatal stress appeared to correlate with differences in beta diversity and specific microbial taxa, but not alpha diversity. Prenatal stress is positively correlated with Proteobacteria, Bacteroidaceae, Lachnospiraceae, Prevotellaceae, Bacteroides, and Serratia. Negative correlations were observed for Actinobacteria, Enterobacteriaceae, Streptococcaceae, Bifidobacteria, Eggerthella, Parabacteroides, and Streptococcus. Evidence for the direction of association between prenatal stress and Lactobacillus was mixed. The synthesis of findings was limited by differences in study design, operationalization and timing of prenatal stress, timing of infant microbiome sampling, and microbiome analysis methods.

This study investigated the utility of the Early Motor Skills Questionnaire-Extended Version (EMQ-X). Participants included 165 child'ren who were participating in the Brain and Early Experience study, which is a prospective longitudinal study of children followed across the first 5 years of life. Parent-reported motor skills were moderately associated with other aspects of children's development (temperament and gesture use) and experience (exposure to learning materials), with rs approximate to .25 to .45. Children's gross motor, fine motor, and perception action subscales exhibited strong internal consistency and pronounced developmental changes across the first 3 years of life, with greater rates of linear change in infancy compared with toddlerhood. Longer gestational age was associated with higher initial levels of motor skills, and prenatal exposure to smoking was associated with slower rates of motor skill acquisition; these effects were comparable for the gross motor, fine motor, and perception action subscales. The EMQ-X is an efficient tool for measuring children's motor skills and may be of special interest for use in studies where performance-based assessments are not feasible.

Lead is highly toxic to the developing brain. Given its persistence in the environment, new intervention strategies are needed to mitigate the impacts of lead on child neurodevelopment. The gut microbiome, referring to the bacteria and microorganisms residing in the gastrointestinal system, may be a viable target for intervention. This short review summarizes recent evidence linking the gut-brain axis to child developmental outcomes. We explore how lead-induced effects to the gut microbiome could indirectly affect child neurodevelopment, such that disrupting or offsetting this mediating process could buffer the effects of lead on child developmental outcomes. Unexpected findings with respect to child microbiota diversity and child cognitive and behavioral outcomes as well as lead exposure and adult microbiota diversity are discussed. When possible, we draw connections between observed changes to relative bacterial abundance, proposed bacterial functions, and downstream effects to brain development. We also explore how the gut microbiome might modify the toxicity of lead by impeding the uptake of lead across the gastrointestinal tract or through indirect mechanisms in such ways that the gut microbiome does not fit within a mediating pathway. In this case, promoting the buffering capacity of the gut microbiome may reduce the impacts of lead on child neurodevelopment. The goal of this short review is to bring attention to the potential role of the gut microbiome in the associations between lead exposure and child neurodevelopment with an eye towards intervention.

BACKGROUND:Psychosocial stress and sleep disturbances are common during pregnancy and can contribute to heightened hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, potentially impacting maternal and fetal health. Hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) provide a measure of cumulative circulating cortisol over a period of months and serve as a marker of HPA-axis activity. Yet the interplay between psychosocial stress, sleep quality, and HCC during pregnancy remains unclear. METHODS:We conducted a secondary analysis of 141 pregnant women from the Brain and Early Experiences (BEE) Study. Two types of psychosocial stressors - financial strain and pregnancy-related anxiety - were assessed using the Economic Strain Questionnaire and the Pregnancy-Related Anxiety Questionnaire, respectively. Sleep quality was measured via the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, and HCC was analyzed from 3 cm of hair collected toward the end of the second trimester. Multivariable linear regression tested associations between psychosocial stressors, sleep quality, and HCC, adjusting for key covariates. Mediation analyses assessed whether sleep quality mediated associations between psychosocial stressors and HCC. RESULTS:Financial strain was significantly associated with both poorer sleep quality (β=0.22, P = .02) and higher HCC (β=0.26, P = .006). Pregnancy-related anxiety was not linked to poorer sleep quality P = .23) or HCC (P = .17). Sleep quality did not mediate psychosocial stressors and HCC associations. CONCLUSION:Findings suggest that financial strain may contribute to poorer sleep quality during pregnancy. Financial strain may also contribute to higher cortisol levels, independent of its association with sleep quality. Understanding these associations is critical for identifying intervention targets to mitigate stress-related health risks during pregnancy.

The infant brain and gut microbiome both develop rapidly in early infancy. Growing evidence indicates that the gut microbiome plays a critical role in shaping neurodevelopment early in life, possibly through effects on brain regions involved in affective, interoceptive, and sensory processing. This study used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and whole genome sequencing of fecal samples to examine associations between the gut microbiome and brain structures in infants at 2 weeks of age. We identified significant relationships between specific gut microbiome characteristics and brain volumes in key regions involved in affective, sensory, and interoceptive processing. Our most consistent findings were associations between gut microbiome and insula volume, suggesting that the insula may be particularly sensitive to gut microbiome influences during the neonatal period. Specifically, a significant negative association between insula volume and the abundance of Veillonella was observed. Alpha diversity (Shannon) and functional pathways were also related to insula structure. Enterobacter was negatively associated with thalamus volume. These findings contribute to the growing evidence of a developing gut-brain axis, highlighting links between the gut and brain as early as 2 weeks of age. Future research should investigate the mechanisms by which specific microbial features impact neurodevelopment by way of the insula, as well as explore the potential long-term implications of these early relationships on sensory, interoceptive, and affective processing, and behavioral outcomes.

Over the past decade, research has increasingly focused on the neurodevelopmental pathways through which specific dimensions of childhood adversity, such as threat (i.e., interpersonal violence), contribute to psychopathology risk in children and adolescents. Rodent models of rough maternal care have provided novel insights, suggesting that threat disrupts the neural circuitry underlying fear learning and emotional reactivity. While some of these findings have been translated, neurodevelopmental mechanisms identified in rodent research remain unexplored in the human neuroscience literature. In this review, we draw on the rodent literature to propose novel mechanisms through which childhood threat shapes brain development and influence long-term risk for psychopathology.

Biological and environmental factors shape and impact infant’s sleep development from the first months of life (Sadeh et al., 2010). In a sample of African American infants (Mage = 6.53 months, 45% female) and their caregivers (n = 86), the current study examined the links between parental behaviors (sensitive and harsh parenting behaviors), child’s parasympathetic functioning to stress, and sleep quality. Cardiac vagal flexibility is a physiological index of social-emotional sensitivity in young children (Miller et al., 2013; Shakiba et al., 2023), with children with greater vagal flexibility tend to be responsive and influenced by their familial environmental cues, either positive or negative cues (Muhtadie et al., 2015). The study further explored whether the effects of parenting behaviors on a child’s sleep quality may vary, in part, depending on the child’s physiological responsiveness and regulation in response to stressors. Mothers and their 6-month-olds were observed during a free-play task at the home visit. The parent-child interaction was coded based on various subscales assessing caregiving sensitivity and harshness. Children’s parasympathetic functioning, indexed by the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), was assessed during the Face-to-Face Still Face Paradigm (FFSFP; Tronick et al., 1978). Child’s vagal flexibility (Miller et al., 2013) represents the non-linear and dynamic patterns of RSA change over the course of the task and was modeled by using the latent basis growth curve modeling approach. Infant’s sleep was objectively measured using videosomnography and actigraphy. Structural equation modeling approach was performed to test the study’s questions. We found that the effects of parenting on children’s sleep efficiency, defined as the ratio of sleep interval to rest interval, differed across children and depended upon their levels of vagal flexibility to stress. High-sensitive caregiving predicted greater sleep efficiency only in infants who exhibited high vagal flexibility or adaptive patterns of parasympathetic regulation across the FFSFP. Similarly, for infants with high (but not low) vagal flexibility, high levels of harsh parenting predicted lower sleep efficiency. The findings highlight the importance of considering the interplay between biological and environmental factors to better understand individual differences in infants’ sleep development and patterns. Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD, Grant#R21HD077146.

Exposure to lead during early life, including in pregnancy, is toxic to neurodevelopment. Though public health initiatives have resulted in an overall reduction in lead exposure levels, lead remains a significant environmental hazard, requiring innovative efforts to mitigate the burden of early life lead. This study explored whether positive postnatal social experiences in the forms of positive caregiving and a rich cognitive home environment moderate the associations of prenatal lead on child neurodevelopmental outcomes including language skills, effortful control, and executive function skills. We leverage an analytic sample (N = 107) drawn from a prospective cohort of mother-infant dyads. Prenatal lead was measured from maternal urine, positive caregiving from observational methods, and cognitive home environment from a validated questionnaire. Results reveal a negative association of prenatal lead on child language when the cognitive home environment in infancy was poor (β=-0.32, p = 0.04) but not when the cognitive home environment in infancy was rich (β=0.20, p = 0.16). This buffering effect was not observed for the child outcomes of effortful control or executive function skills. Our results encourage future research into the provision of a rich cognitive home environment as a means of mitigating the detrimental effects of prenatal lead exposure on early child language skills.

Dimensional models of early adversity propose developmental mechanisms by which threat and deprivation confer risk for psychopathology. Exposure to violent environments may influence social information processing biases, and limited access to complex learning environments might be associated with general challenges in emotion recognition. We examined associations of adversity measured early in development (6-36 months) and emotion recognition in early (72 months) and middle (96 months) childhood in a sample of 92 mother-child dyads. Low cognitive stimulation negatively predicted early childhood emotion recognition (β = -0.32, p = .01). Moreover, experiences of intimate-partner violence were associated with anger bias, but not global emotion recognition, in early (β = 0.24, p = .01), and middle (β = 0.18, p = .04) childhood. This pattern suggests that while the lack of exposure to complex learning experiences might impact children's conceptual knowledge of emotions, children who experience violence show biases that facilitate threat detection.

ABSTRACT Self‐regulation is an essential component of school readiness. Although in educational contexts self‐regulation is typically defined in terms of volitional processes, it also encompasses the activity of neurophysiological systems, including the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). In a prospective longitudinal study, 102 preschoolers ( M age = 4.82 years; 52% female) completed two measures of volitional self‐regulation (the gift‐wrap task and a battery of EF tasks) at the beginning of their final preschool year, and then completed the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) at year's end. Larger increases in parasympathetic function (indexed by respiratory sinus arrythmia, or RSA) during both the gift‐wrap and EF tasks were correlated with better performance on the BSRA at levels approaching significance, and subsequent regression models that controlled for relevant covariates revealed robust associations between increases in RSA and improved BSRA performance (gift wrap: B = 5.49, p = .012; EF: B = 7.77, p = .001). We interpret these results in light of polyvagal theory and discuss their implications for incorporating measures of parasympathetic activity into future educational neuroscience research.

Multiple external stressors are known to have adverse impacts on health and development. Certain groups are more vulnerable and/or more likely to be exposed to environmental, psychological, and social stressors simultaneously. Yet, few studies have examined combined exposure to environmental toxicants and psychosocial stress. Here, we integrated environmental chemical exposure data collected using silicone wristbands and self-report social stressor data within the Brain and Early Experience (BEE) perinatal cohort to understand co-exposure to environmental chemicals and social stress. Silicone wristbands were worn for one week by mothers throughout central North Carolina who were 6 months postpartum (n = 97). Exposure to 110 environmental chemicals across eight chemical classes was quantified on silicone wristbands using gas chromatography mass spectrometry. Social stress was evaluated using eight established self-report questionnaires (e.g., Brief Symptom Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale), quantifying experiences such as race-related stress, economic strain, and relationship conflict. Hair cortisol levels were measured as an additional metric of stress. The chemical exposure landscape and associations among chemical exposure, demographic characteristics, and social stress were characterized through individual variable analyses, cluster and data reduction, and compiled scoring approaches to comprehensively evaluate chemical and social stress burdens. We found that chemicals contain co-occurring patterns largely based on chemical class, with phthalates representing the chemical class with highest exposure and polychlorinated biphenyls the lowest. Chemicals showed differential exposure across racial groups, with diethyl phthalate, triphenyl phosphate, and tris(3,5-dimethyl phenyl) phosphate at higher levels in Black participants compared with White participants. Integrating social stressor profiling with chemical exposure data identified one particularly vulnerable subset of participants in which high chemical exposure burden coincided with high experiences of racism and economic stress. These findings demonstrate co-occurring chemical and social stress, warranting further investigation to better understand how these combined stressors may contribute to disparities in maternal and child health.

The role of the early life gut microbiome in children’s risk for psychopathology has gained increasing interest in recent years. Most research on this topic has focused on the first three to four years of life because this is a critical period for developing connections between the gut microbiome and the brain. Prior research has identified associations between variability in the composition and diversity of the gut microbiome in infancy and markers of temperamental risk for psychopathology, including negative affect. However, the specific microbes affected, and the directionality of these associations have differed between studies, likely due to differences in the developmental period of focus and assessment approaches. In the current preregistered study, we examined connections between the gut microbiome, assessed at two time points in infancy (2 weeks and 18 months of age), and negative affect measured at 30 months of age in a longitudinal study of infants and their caregivers. We found that infants with higher gut microbiome diversity and Veillonella abundance at 2 weeks of age, and higher Ruthenibacterium abundance at 18 months, showed more observed negative affect during a study visit at 30 months. These results suggest timing-specific associations between the gut microbiome and negative affect even within this early critical period.

Effortful control (EC) is characterized by regulatory strategies that contribute to patterns of (mal)adaptation across development. Deficits in EC pose risk for externalizing psychopathology, but whether and how subfactors of EC differentially influence children’s conduct problems (CP), attention deficit disordered behaviors (ADD), and callous-unemotional (CU) traits remains unknown. Research on EC may benefit from alternative modeling strategies that allow for comparisons of overall EC scores and its subfactors in the prediction of externalizing outcomes. The current study uses a bi-factor structural equation modeling approach to examine if general EC and its subfactors (i.e., attentional focusing, low-intensity pleasure, perceptual sensitivity, inhibitory control) at 36 months differentially predict CP, ADD, and CU traits at 84 months. Using a longitudinal sample of 206 children followed from age three to seven years (47.8% female, 42.6% European-American), results indicated that increased general EC at 36 months predicted reduced CU traits and ADD at 84 months. Attentional focusing was the only subfactor to uniquely predict later CU traits, suggesting that attentional abilities hold particular significance for buffering against psychopathy. Findings are interpreted in the context of methodological and theoretical significance for future developmental research, as well as implications for interventions targeting regulatory strategies in early childhood.