Matthews - maternal adversity

So, when we know that the fetus goes through massive change from conception through to birth. You go from two cells coming together, to billions of cells. And, what we’re beginning to understand now, is that the environment that is around those developing cells, those developing organs, and that developing organism, can have a huge impact on how those systems get put together, how they get wired if you like. And, what’s become, what’s becoming, more and more clear now, is there are specific environments that can have very profound effects. We’ve been particularly interested in the maternal environment in the context of maternal anxiety, and maternal stress and also glucocorticoid exposure. 

So maternal adversity obviously can come in many forms. There’s maternal adversity in you know, a human context, which may be a woman who is experiencing anxiety. It may be a mother who has depression during pregnancy. And, what we know now, is that prenatal stress, or adversity during pregnancy can lead to activation of the maternal pituitary adrenal axis. And, we know that the maternal pituitary adrenal axis and the fetal pituitary adrenal axis can have a big impact.  

And we know that with maternal anxiety in many cases, there is an increase in maternal cortisol concentrations, and we know that this will result in an increase in fetal cortisol concentrations. And so, cortisol has been identified, or glucocorticoids, have been identified as a real linker between the maternal adversity, maternal anxiety, and programming of function after birth.