biology

Prenatal stress

Prenatal stress is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Prenatal stress rather than just read about it. In short: Prenatal stress, also known as prenatal maternal stress, occurs when an expectant mother is exposed to psychosocial or physical stress. This can be brought on by daily events or environmental hardships.[1] [2] According to the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), a wide range of environmental factors a woman may experience during the perinatal period can contribute to biological impacts and changes i…

Key takeaways

Prenatal stress belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Prenatal stress to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Prenatal stress from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Prenatal stress, also known as prenatal maternal stress, occurs when an expectant mother is exposed to psychosocial or physical stress. This can be brought on by daily events or environmental hardships.[1] [2] According to the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), a wide range of environmental factors a woman may experience during the perinatal period can contribute to biological impacts and changes in the fetus that then cause health risks later in the child's life. Health risks include impaired cognitive development, low birth weight, mental disorders, and gender specific deficits in the offspring.

Research

Studies explore the way that prenatal stress impacts the fetus's development. One of the ways the body responds to stress is via the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Expectant mothers that experience high levels of stressors trigger a response from the HPA axis. This then triggers the release of glucocorticoids. This increases the level of glucocorticoid in the mother and the fetus. Studies show that elevated levels of glucocorticoids can affect neurodevelopment in the fetus. Some research includes studies like McKenna et al. suggesting that the idea of pregnancy can cause an increased risk of psychopathology and these exposures during gestation impacts epigenetic. The mother's usage of selective serotonin repute inhibitors (SSRIs) was observed while the epigenetic age of the child was calculated through fetal umbilical cord blood. Saboory et al. found that prenatal psychosocial stress can cause delays in child growth and development through assessing the child's weight, height and head circumference every two months after they were born. They also assessed the child's cognitive development through the use of the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ). Another study, Brannigan et al. focused on how prenatal stress contributes to personality disorders by looking at children decades later born from mothers who spent time in a mental health clinic in Finland. All of this research had found negative correlations between prenatal stress and the child's development.

Timing of prenatal stress A study by Sandman and Davis shows that the timing of prenatal stress is crucial to understanding how prenatal stress affects prenatal and postnatal development. Cortisol is often used to measure stress as it is a hormone that is released during stressful events. If an expectant mother is experiencing a stressful event such as income insecurity or being a teenage mother, cortisol is secreted as a result. However, as demonstrated by Sandman and Davis, the timing of cortisol release can sometimes have a harmful effect on development and sometimes not depending on when in pregnancy stress is experienced. Prenatal stress can increase the likelihood of maternal and endocrinological problems. Prenatal stress can even cause the embryo to arrive earlier than expected. Sandman and Davis studied "125 full- term infants at 3, 6, and 12 months of age" to determine the effects of maternal cortisol timing differences on development. They found that "exposure to elevated concentrations of cortisol early in gestation was associated with a slower rate of development over the 1st year and lower mental development scores at 12 months" and "elevated levels of maternal cortisol late in gestation were associated with accelerated cognitive development and higher scores at 12 months". Overall, cortisol's effects on infant cognitive development are dependent upon the timing of cortisol release. Furthermore, prenatal stress can have an effect on fetal development by causing obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other problems.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Prenatal stress

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Prenatal stress claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Prenatal stress before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Prenatal stress ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Prenatal stress

In research: Prenatal stress appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Prenatal stress in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Prenatal stress is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Midwifery, Obstetrics, Stress (biological and psychological), so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Prenatal stress outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Prenatal stress in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Prenatal stress means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Prenatal stress out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Prenatal stress in simple terms?

Why does Prenatal stress matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Prenatal stress?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Prenatal stress.