By Madhurima Ghosh –
According to new study, development of the new born brain networks may get affected due to the exposure to mother’s antiepileptic or antidepressant medication
University of Helsinki developed novel mathematical methods in their study to research the effect of commonly used drugs or other environmental conditions on the newborn brain.
Pregnant mothers often need treatment for their medical conditions, such as mood disorders or epilepsy and the outcome of such drug usage on newborn brain network functions were studied in detail at the BABA Center, a research unit at the University of Helsinki and at New Children’s Hospital of HUS Helsinki University Hospital. The study measured electrical brain activity during sleep using electroencephalography (EEG) and with the help of advanced mathematical techniques, cortical network properties were calculated. Senior Researcher Anton Tokariev says that prior studies have shown cortical activity changes across sleep states provide important information on infants’ neurological condition.
During the fetal period exposure to antiepileptics and antidepressants have specific effects in the cortical networks depending on the type of drug exposure. Antidepressants have more pronounced effect in local cortical networks while antiepileptics had drug-specific effects on brain-wide networks. Both drug types affected brain networks that are reactive to changes in sleep stages.
Mari Videman, a specialist in paediatric neurology at HUS Helsinki University Hospital said that some EEG findings were linked to children’s subsequent neuropsychological development and it was a clinically significant finding. Stronger changes in neural networks predicted a greater deviation in development at two years of age.
The studies offer an entirely new way of assessing the effects of pharmaceutical agents on the development of a child’s brain function.
According to Professor Sampsa Vanhatalo these EEG -based measures are particularly important as they open a window into mechanisms that operate between neuronal cells. This provides an opportunity to study the comparative results observed between human children and research conducted using laboratory-animal models. Such translational work would help to understand the mechanistic underpinnings of the drug effects. For instance, identical animal work is required to study how the amount or timing of maternal drug treatment would affect the brain function of the offspring.
“Our novel methods provide a general analytical framework to support extensive future research on the questions of how fetal brain development is affected by changes in the intrauterine environment. Such studies may go far beyond maternal drug treatment, including also mother’s nutrition and overall physical condition, as well as a myriad of further environmental factors,” Vanhatalo summarises. (ANI)