# Psychosocial unpredictability during pregnancy and offspring neurodevelopment: Uncovering mechanisms and sensitive windows in utero

> **NIH NIH K99** · NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE · 2024 · $123,768

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
My career goal is to build a translational program of research that investigates the developmental origins of
psychiatric disease, with a focus on perinatal mechanisms by which adversity can be transmitted from parents
to their children. To date, I have obtained extensive training in the assessment of adversity and psychiatric
symptomatology in historically minoritized families, maternal-infant cortisol functioning, infant fMRI, and
perinatal mental health. My career development plan builds on this knowledge base by providing crucial,
intensive training in the imaging and analysis of fetal brain networks, ecological momentary assessment,
advanced longitudinal statistics, and fetal ECG. Completion of the proposed research and training is essential
to prepare me to lead a lab that leverages multimodal developmental neuroscience techniques to discover risk
and resilience processes during the earliest stages of life, which may help to disrupt the intergenerational
transmission of health disparities.
Research Project: Exposure to maternal stress during pregnancy is one of the most robust transdiagnostic
risk factors for psychiatric illness across the lifespan. Yet we lack critical information about the features of
stress that are most salient for fetal biology, the intrauterine mechanisms that link maternal stress to child
psychiatric risk, and whether there are sensitive windows when fetal biology is most strongly impacted by
maternal stress. Using a multimodal approach, the goal of this K99/R00 is to examine intraindividual variation
in maternal prenatal stress as a unique predictor of two candidate mechanisms underlying psychiatric risk in
children: fetal autonomic nervous system (ANS) development and fetal functional neurocircuitry. In the K99
portion of this award, we will leverage a repeated measures longitudinal design to examine associations
between real-world variation in maternal stress and fetal ANS development across 14 weeks of pregnancy,
including examination of sensitive windows (Aim 1). We will also examine how intraindividual variation in
maternal stress relates to long-term trajectory of fetal ANS development and fetal neurocircuitry, predicting that
stress unpredictability will uniquely impact fetal neurodevelopment (Aim 2). The R00 project will provide
necessary context to this neuromaturational model by evaluating how interactions across stress-responsive
systems (HPA axis and ANS) and maternal history of lifetime adversity modulate stress-related programming
of the fetal brain in a high-risk cohort. In the R00, we will additionally assess whether adversity-related
signatures in the fetal brain persist into infancy (Aim 3). This line of research has potential to isolate the
beginning of developmental cascades that underscore emergence of depression and other psychiatric
disorders, thus informing interventions that can leverage the unparalleled plasticity of the developing brain.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10904930
- **Project number:** 5K99MH133978-02
- **Recipient organization:** NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
- **Principal Investigator:** Cassandra Lei Hendrix
- **Activity code:** K99 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $123,768
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-09-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10904930

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10904930, Psychosocial unpredictability during pregnancy and offspring neurodevelopment: Uncovering mechanisms and sensitive windows in utero (5K99MH133978-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10904930. Licensed CC0.

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