Journal
NEUROSCIENCE AND BIOBEHAVIORAL REVIEWS
Volume 30, Issue 8, Pages 1078-1086Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2006.04.003
Keywords
pregnancy; prenatal environment; functional review; cognitive deficit; dual task; orbitofrontal cortex; prefrontal map
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Anxiety and stress experienced by the mother during pregnancy are reported to have a negative association with the cognitive development of the child. An integration of recent evidence from cognitive reaction time tasks pointed to a deficit in endogenous response inhibition, a function ascribed to prefrontal cortex. To further delineate the cognitive sequelae associated with antenatal maternal anxiety, we reviewed recent neuro-imaging literature to create a cortical map of regions commonly and selectively activated by well-known cognitive tasks. The pragmatic value of this cortical map was tested in a follow-up sample of 49 17-year old adolescents. Adolescents of mothers with high levels of anxiety during week 12-22 of their pregnancy performed significantly lower in tasks which required integration and control of different task parameters. Working memory, inhibition of a prepotent response, and visual orienting of attention were not impaired. Based on the established cortical map, these results were related to subtle developmental aberrations in a part of, or in cortical and sub-cortical regions linked to, the orbitofrontal cortex. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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