PMID- 20550950
OWN - NLM
STAT- MEDLINE
DCOM- 20110107
LR  - 20220321
IS  - 1872-6321 (Electronic)
IS  - 0165-0173 (Linking)
VI  - 65
IP  - 1
DP  - 2010 Oct 5
TI  - Prenatal stress and brain development.
PG  - 56-79
LID - 10.1016/j.brainresrev.2010.06.002 [doi]
AB  - Prenatal stress (PS) has been linked to abnormal cognitive, behavioral and 
      psychosocial outcomes in both animals and humans. Animal studies have clearly 
      demonstrated PS effects on the offspring's brain, however, while it has been 
      speculated that PS most likely affects the brains of exposed human fetuses as 
      well, no study has to date examined this possibility prospectively using an 
      independent stressor (i.e., a stressful event that the pregnant woman has no 
      control over, such as a natural disaster). The aim of this review is to summarize 
      the existing animal literature by focusing on specific brain regions that have 
      been shown to be affected by PS both macroscopically and microscopically. These 
      regions include the hippocampus, amygdala, corpus callosum, anterior commissure, 
      cerebral cortex, cerebellum and hypothalamus. We first discuss the mechanisms by 
      which the effects of PS might occur. In particular, we show that maternal and 
      fetal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axes, and the placenta, are the most 
      likely candidates for these mechanisms. We see that, although animal studies have 
      obvious advantages over human studies, the integration of findings in animals and 
      the transfer of these findings to human populations remains a complex issue. 
      Finally, we show how it is possible to circumvent these challenges by studying 
      the effects of PS on brain development directly in humans, by taking advantage of 
      natural or man-made disasters and assessing the impact and consequences of such 
      stressful events on pregnant women and their offspring prospectively.
CI  - Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
FAU - Charil, Arnaud
AU  - Charil A
AD  - McGill University, Department of Psychiatry, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
FAU - Laplante, David P
AU  - Laplante DP
FAU - Vaillancourt, Cathy
AU  - Vaillancourt C
FAU - King, Suzanne
AU  - King S
LA  - eng
GR  - MOP-79424/Canadian Institutes of Health Research/Canada
PT  - Journal Article
PT  - Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
PT  - Review
DEP - 20100613
PL  - Netherlands
TA  - Brain Res Rev
JT  - Brain research reviews
JID - 101300366
RN  - WI4X0X7BPJ (Hydrocortisone)
SB  - IM
MH  - Adult
MH  - Animals
MH  - Brain/*growth & development/physiology
MH  - Disasters
MH  - Female
MH  - Fetus/physiology
MH  - Humans
MH  - Hydrocortisone/physiology
MH  - Hypothalamo-Hypophyseal System/embryology
MH  - Magnetic Resonance Imaging
MH  - Male
MH  - Pituitary-Adrenal System/embryology
MH  - Pregnancy
MH  - Pregnancy, Animal/physiology
MH  - Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects/*pathology
MH  - Sex Characteristics
MH  - Stress, Psychological/complications/*pathology
EDAT- 2010/06/17 06:00
MHDA- 2011/01/08 06:00
CRDT- 2010/06/17 06:00
PHST- 2010/01/06 00:00 [received]
PHST- 2010/05/29 00:00 [revised]
PHST- 2010/06/09 00:00 [accepted]
PHST- 2010/06/17 06:00 [entrez]
PHST- 2010/06/17 06:00 [pubmed]
PHST- 2011/01/08 06:00 [medline]
AID - S0165-0173(10)00072-X [pii]
AID - 10.1016/j.brainresrev.2010.06.002 [doi]
PST - ppublish
SO  - Brain Res Rev. 2010 Oct 5;65(1):56-79. doi: 10.1016/j.brainresrev.2010.06.002. 
      Epub 2010 Jun 13.