A Role for Fetal Movement in Shaping Maternal Neurodevelopment

Emerging evidence suggests that the maternal brain undergoes significant change during pregnancy, which may serve to prepare the individual for caregiving, including increased maternal responsiveness. It has been proposed that fetal movement may play a role in shaping maternal neurodevelopment during pregnancy, including increasing responsiveness to infant cues. In the current study, we examined links between fetal movement and neural responses to infant cues in 22 primiparous pregnant women. We recorded fetal movement via Doppler-based actocardiography, assessing the total number and duration of fetal movements. We also recorded high-density-array EEG while women viewed distress and neutral infant faces and examined the P300 (attentional processing) and N170 (perceptual processing) ERP amplitudes elicited by those faces. For the P300, we found that higher fetal movement counts and longer durations of fetal movement were associated with greater P300 responses to distress, but not neutral, infant faces. Our findings were comparable when adjusting for gestational weeks, time between lab visits, psychological risk, and fetal sex. For the N170, there were no associations between fetal movement and N170 amplitudes. Our results provide the first evidence that fetal movement activity may contribute to maternal neurodevelopment; specifically, women with more active fetuses evidence heightened neural responding to infant distress consistent with greater allocation of attention to these salient infant cues.