Maternal environment during pregnancy shapes offspring neural circuitry and social behaviors

Social interactions encompass complex behaviors that promote individual and group benefits such as communication and cooperation but can also include negative outcomes including competition and conflict. Neural circuits that facilitate social behaviors begin developing in utero and are informed by the maternal environment which include nutritional status, immune state, stress, and microbiome composition. This relationship between the maternal environment during pregnancy and the programming of social circuits and behaviors suggests a critical window of opportunity for early interventions strategies for social disorders, such as autism spectrum disorders. Here, we review recent causal mechanistic findings on how maternal environmental exposures during pregnancy can shape development and function of circuits implicated in social behaviors.