Birth of the blues: emotional sound processing in infants exposed to prenatal maternal depression
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Updated: Sep 5, 2025
P50 Sensory Gating in Infants
Published on: December 26, 2013
Michael C Craig1,2,3, Vaheshta Sethna1, Maria Gudbrandsen1
1Department of Forensic & Neurodevelopmental Sciences, Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
Insights
Infants exposed to prenatal maternal depression show altered brain responses to emotional sounds. This early frontal-limbic network difference may explain the increased risk for lifelong depression.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Psychiatry
Background:
- Prenatal maternal depression (PMD) increases offspring vulnerability to depression.
- This intergenerational risk is complex, potentially involving frontal-limbic network dysfunction.
- Information processing biases, like attending to sad stimuli, are linked to depression and may be transmitted.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the association between prenatal maternal depression (PMD) and infant frontal-limbic network function.
- To determine if infants exposed to PMD exhibit atypical brain activity in response to emotional sounds.
- To explore potential neural mechanisms for depression transmission.
Main Methods:
- Used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain function in 3-6 month old infants.
- Compared brain activity in response to emotional sounds between infants exposed to PMD and a control group.
- Analyzed data from 58 infants (29 exposed to PMD, 29 controls) after exclusions.
Main Results:
- Infants exposed to PMD showed significant differences in frontal-limbic brain regions compared to controls.
- A relative increase in activation to sad sounds was observed in the PMD-exposed group.
- Reduced or unchanged activation to happy sounds was noted in frontal-limbic clusters for the PMD-exposed group.
Conclusions:
- Differential brain responses to positive and negative emotional sounds emerge by 3-6 months in infants exposed to PMD.
- These findings suggest early neural alterations that may mediate the increased risk for later-life depression.
- Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for early intervention and prevention strategies.
Background:
Offspring exposed to prenatal maternal depression (PMD) are vulnerable to depression across their lifespan. The underlying cause(s) for this elevated intergenerational risk is most likely complex. However, depression is underpinned by a dysfunctional frontal-limbic network, associated with core information processing biases (e.g. attending more to sad stimuli). Aberrations in this network might mediate transmission of this vulnerability in infants exposed to PMD. In this study, we aimed to explore the association between foetal exposure to PMD and frontal-limbic network function in infancy, hypothesising that, in response to emotional sounds, infants exposed to PMD would exhibit atypical activity in these regions, relative to those not exposed to PMD.
Method:
We employed a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging sequence to compare brain function, whilst listening to emotional sounds, in 78 full-term infants (3-6 months of age) born to mothers with and without a diagnosis of PMD.
Results:
After exclusion of 19 datasets due to infants waking up, or moving excessively, we report between-group brain activity differences, between 29 infants exposed to PMD and 29 infants not exposed to PMD, occurring in temporal, striatal, amygdala/parahippocampal and frontal regions (p < 0.005). The offspring exposed to PMD exhibited a relative increase in activation to sad sounds and reduced (or unchanged) activation to happy sounds in frontal-limbic clusters.
Conclusions:
Findings of a differential response to positive and negative valanced sounds by 3-6 months of age may have significant implications for our understanding of neural mechanisms that underpin the increased risk for later-life depression in this population.
