Exposure to Unpredictable Maternal Sensory Signals Influences Cognitive Development Across Species

Publication Date

9-26-2017

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Cross-species, Maternal care, Cognition, Brain development, Early experiences

Abstract

Maternal care is a critical determinant of child development. However, our understanding of processes and mechanisms by which maternal behavior influences the developing human brain remains limited. Animal research has illustrated that patterns of sensory information is important in shaping neural circuits during development. Here we examined the relation between degree of predictability of maternal sensory signals early in life and subsequent cognitive function in both humans (n = 128 mother/infant dyads) and rats (n = 12 dams; 28 adolescents). Behaviors of mothers interacting with their offspring were observed in both species, and an entropy rate was calculated as a quantitative measure of degree of predictability of transitions among maternal sensory signals (visual, auditory, and tactile). Human cognitive function was assessed at age 2 y with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and at age 6.5 y with a hippocampus-dependent delayed-recall task. Rat hippocampus-dependent spatial memory was evaluated on postnatal days 49–60. Early life exposure to unpredictable sensory signals portended poor cognitive performance in both species. The present study provides evidence that predictability of maternal sensory signals early in life impacts cognitive function in both rats and humans. The parallel between experimental animal and observational human data lends support to the argument that predictability of maternal sensory signals causally influences cognitive development.

Copyright Date

9-11-2017

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Rights Holder

Elysia Poggi Davis, Stephanie A. Stout, Jenny Molet, Brian Vegetabile, Laura M. Glynn, Curt A. Sandman, Kevin Heins, Hal Stern, and Tallie Z. Baram

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the authors, under exclusive license to the National Academy of Sciences. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Davis, E. P., Stout, S. A., Molet, J., Vegetabile, B., Glynn, L. M., Sandman, C. A., . . ., & Baram, T. Z. (2017). Exposure to unpredictable maternal sensory signals influences cognitive development across species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 114(39), 10390-10395. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1703444114

Publication Title

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Volume

114

Issue

39

First Page

10390

Last Page

10395

ISSN

1091-6490

PubMed ID

28893979



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