ArticleJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2021
An examination of maternal prenatal BMI and human fetal brain development.
Article in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
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Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Investigating the influence of maternal prenatal BMI and perinatal depressive symptoms on neonatal brain network dynamics.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- Maternal obesity and the embryonic rewiring of feeding circuits: Beyond the hypothalamus.Molecular metabolism · 2026Review
- Prenatal stress, hormones, and fetal brain development: gender differences.Hormones (Athens, Greece) · 2026Review
- Fetal functional connectivity prospectively associates with autistic traits in toddlerhood.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2026Article
- Research progress on the association of maternal high-fat diet with offspring neurodevelopment and susceptibility to Parkinson's disease.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- Parental high-fat/high-sugar diets and their lasting impact on brain development in offspring: a longitudinal mouse MRI study.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Peri- and Postnatal High Fat Feeding Have Differential Effects on Executive Function and Associated Neurobiology in Aged Male and Female Mice.Aging cell · 2025Article
- Neurodevelopmental Pathways from Maternal Obesity to Offspring Outcomes: An Umbrella Review of Cognitive and Behavioral Consequences Across Development.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Current states in understanding oligodendroglia-mediated neurological issues in neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1).Acta neuropathologica communications · 2025Review
- Impact of high maternal body mass index on fetal cerebral cortical and cerebellar volumes.Journal of perinatal medicine · 2025Article
- Neuroactive steroids in the programming of neurodevelopment: implications of maternal obesity.Frontiers in endocrinology · 2025Review
- Greater Neighborhood Disadvantage Is Associated with Alterations in Fetal Functional Brain Network Structure.The Journal of pediatrics · 2024Observational
- Advances in Fetal Brain Imaging.Magnetic resonance imaging clinics of North America · 2024Review
- Trajectories of brain and behaviour development in the womb, at birth and through infancy.Nature human behaviour · 2024Review
- Association of maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index with resilience and prosociality of the offspring aged 6-7 years old: a population-based cohort study in Japan.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2024Article
- Placental inflammatory cytokines mRNA expression and preschool children's cognitive performance: a birth cohort study in China.BMC medicine · 2023Article
- The association of maternal overweight on long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes in premature infants (< 29 weeks) at 18-24 months corrected age.Journal of perinatology : official journal of the California Perinatal Association · 2023Article
- Network-specific selectivity of functional connections in the neonatal brain.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2023Article
- Maternal psychological distress associates with alterations in resting-state low-frequency fluctuations and distal functional connectivity of the neonate medial prefrontal cortex.The European journal of neuroscience · 2023Article
- Maternal pre-pregnancy obesity affects the uncinate fasciculus white matter tract in preterm infants.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 5 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPrenatal development is a time when the brain is acutely vulnerable to insult and alteration by environmental factors (e.g., toxins, maternal health). One important risk factor is maternal obesity (Body Mass Index > 30). Recent research indicates that high maternal BMI during pregnancy is associated with increased risk for numerous physical health, cognitive, and mental health problems in offspring across the lifespan. It is possible that heightened maternal prenatal BMI influences the developing brain even before birth.
methodsThe present study examines this possibility at the level of macrocircuitry in the human fetal brain. Using a data-driven strategy for parcellating the brain into subnetworks, we test whether MRI functional connectivity within or between fetal neural subnetworks varies with maternal prenatal BMI in 109 fetuses between the ages of 26 and 39weeks.
resultsWe discovered that strength of connectivity between two subnetworks, left anterior insula/inferior frontal gyrus (aIN/IFG) and bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC), varied with maternal BMI. At the level of individual aIN/IFG-PFC connections, we observed both increased and decreased between-network connectivity with a tendency for increased within-hemisphere connectivity and reduced cross-hemisphere connectivity in higher BMI pregnancies. Maternal BMI was not associated with global differences in network topography based on network-based statistical analyses.
conclusionsOverall effects were localized in regions that will later support behavioral regulation and integrative processes, regions commonly associated with obesity-related deficits. By establishing onset in neural differences prior to birth, this study supports a model in which maternal BMI-related risk is associated with fetal connectome-level brain organization with implications for offspring long-term cognitive development and mental health.
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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.