Pregnancy brings profound changes and, although sought after, it can be a time when emotions are at their highest and it is sometimes difficult for the pregnant woman to find a balance. Therefore, promoting positive mental health during this period is crucial for her, but also for the long-term health and well-being of her children. New research carried out on young children by Prof. Qiu Anqi, Professor at the Department of Health Technology and Informatics and Global Stem Scholar at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), together with her team, has validated the impact of maternal positive emotions on the correct development of the brain and cognitive functions of children.
According to research conducted by Professor Qiu, female children born to mothers who reported experiencing greater positive mental health during pregnancy showed larger bilateral hippocampi. Increased hippocampal volume is directly linked to improvements in memory performance.
Significantly, children of mothers with higher positive mental health exhibited altered functional connectivity of several networks, including the default mode, salience, executive control, amygdala, and thalamo-hippocampal networks. These networks are linked to a wide range of cognitive and emotional brain functions and development and are also related to memory.
Positive maternal mental health has lasting impacts on offspring brain development. These impacts are especially pronounced in brain structures such as the hippocampus and amygdala, as well as functional networks such as the visual, default mode, and frontal networks, which are integral to emotion perception and regulation.
Prof. Qiu believes that her research findings “expand the study of maternal mental health beyond maternal psychopathology, suggesting the importance of promoting positive maternal mental health during pregnancy as a potential protective factor for children’s brain development.”
The research provided new evidence that enhancing maternal positive emotions during pregnancy has the potential to promote hippocampal development in children. Thus, maternal positive emotion significantly influences the quality of the parental relationship after childbirth, including increased material sensitivity, warmth, and responsiveness to the child’s needs, as well as increased child socioeconomic development.
The study used a longitudinal dataset to investigate how positive emotions experienced by mothers during pregnancy affect the structure and function of the brains of 7.5-year-old children. The study involving 381 Asian participants in Singapore used both structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The results have been published in Nature Mental Health.
Through confirmatory factor analysis of questionnaires administered between 26 and 28 weeks, a measure of positive maternal mental health was developed, which includes positive effects and emotional well-being during pregnancy. The study findings highlight the importance of delving into a broader spectrum of mental health aspects beyond simple illness, advocating for positive emotions among mothers.
Professor Qiu’s team’s research interests focus on brain development and the use of artificial intelligence to predict and analyse mental health issues in young people. She concludes: “Our research further confirmed the importance of positive mental health and well-being during pregnancy, which is also a key determinant of infant brain development.”
