ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Larger amygdala but no change in hippocampal volume in 10-year-old children exposed to maternal depressive symptomatology since birth.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 164 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
164 citing papers in PubMed, 375 citations in OpenAlex.
- Infant hippocampal and amygdala volume in an observational follow-up from a randomized clinical trial for maternal prenatal depression.Nature communications · 2026Trial
- Examining Associations Between the Timing of Maternal Depressive Symptoms, Parenting Behaviors, and Child Outcomes.Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry · 2026Article
- The Amygdala and Politics.Brain sciences · 2026Review
- A Longitudinal Study of Children's Hippocampal Development: Investigating Maternal Physical Activity, Depression, and Education.Developmental neurobiology · 2026Article
- Maternal mood entropy and children's hippocampal development: Enduring versus transient effects.Development and psychopathology · 2026Article
- From mother to infant: a case report exploring postpartum depression through a cross-cultural lens in Qatar.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Article
- Neonatal striatal volume is associated with infant anhedonia.Journal of affective disorders · 2026Article
- Adverse Childhood Events, Resilience, and Psychopathology.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2025Article
- Parent and Child Influences on Adrenocortical Synchrony During Middle Childhood.Developmental psychobiology · 2025Article
- Structural brain differences in school-aged children who are HIV-exposed uninfected.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- The impact of the BDNF Val66Met genotype on intrusive memories following trauma exposure and in PTSD is moderated by sex and timing of trauma exposure.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Association of social and environmental exposures at the neighborhood level with child brain volume.Environment international · 2025Article
- Hippocampal subregion volumes and preadolescent depression risk in the ABCD sample.Journal of affective disorders · 2025Article
- Multidimensional Effects of Stress on Neuronal Exosome Levels and Simultaneous Transcriptomic Profiles.Biological psychiatry global open science · 2025Article
- Sensitive infant care tunes a frontotemporal interbrain network in adolescence.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The association between adverse childhood experiences and alterations in brain volume and cortical thickness in adults with alcohol use disorder.Addiction biology · 2024Article
- Perinatal Predictors and Mediators of Attachment Patterns in Preschool Children: Exploration of Children's Contributions in Interactions with Mothers.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Main Biological Models of Resilience.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2024Review
- Depression in adolescence and young adulthood: the difficulty to integrate motivational/emotional systems.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Review
- Polygenic risk for depression and anterior and posterior hippocampal volume in children and adolescents.Journal of affective disorders · 2024Article
104 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Maternal separation and poor maternal care in animals have been shown to have important effects on the developing hippocampus and amygdala. In humans, children exposed to abuse/maltreatment or orphanage rearing do not present changes in hippocampal volumes. However, children reared in orphanages present enlarged amygdala volumes, suggesting that the amygdala may be particularly sensitive to severely disturbed (i.e., discontinous, neglectful) care in infancy. Maternal depressive symptomatology has been associated with reductions in overall sensitivity to the infant, and with an increased rate of withdrawn, disengaged behaviors. To determine if poor maternal care associated with maternal depressive symptomatology has a similar pattern of association to the volumes of the hippocampus and amygdala in children, as is the case for severely disturbed infant care (orphanage rearing), we measured hippocampal and amygdala volumes as well as stress hormone (glucocorticoid) levels in children exposed (n = 17) or not (n = 21) to maternal depressive symptomatology since birth. Results revealed no group difference in hippocampal volumes, but larger left and right amygdala volumes and increased levels of glucocorticoids in the children of mothers presenting depressive symptomatology since birth. Moreover, a significant positive correlation was observed between mothers' mean depressive scores and amygdala volumes in their children. The results of this study suggest that amygdala volume in human children may represent an early marker of biological sensitivity to quality of maternal care.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.