# Timing of prenatal stress and infant regulatory functioning

> **NIH NIH R01** · MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $540,456

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
As society seeks to understand the etiology of human emotional and behavioral disorders, increasing attention
must focus on the earliest determinants of vulnerability to these disorders, including those existing during
prenatal life. Maternal stress during pregnancy contributes to this vulnerability by derailing many aspects of
fetal development, including those underlying the infant's later physiological and behavioral responses to
stress. Dysregulation of these stress-coping systems is known to put infants at tremendous risk for later
emotional and behavioral problems. What remains virtually unknown, however, is how the differential timing of
prenatal stress affects the degree of impairment in infants' biobehavioral regulation to stress. In the first
longitudinal prospective study of its kind, we propose to use unprecedented high-frequency sampling to
measure the occurrence of a common major stressor in a cohort of 335 women starting as early as week 15 of
pregnancy, and then determine precisely when during pregnancy (early, mid, late) the stress exposure had the
greatest impact on their 6-month-old infants' physiological responses to stress (i.e., hypothalamic-pituitary axis
and sympathetic nervous system reactivity) and their behavioral responses to stress. The prenatal stressor we
will use as a model is intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV is ideal to study for this purpose because, unlike
many stressors studied in previous research on prenatal stress, IPV is an extremely common stressor
experienced by pregnant women and its timing during pregnancy can be very precisely assessed.
Furthermore, women can experience IPV during pregnancy, postpartum, or both. Therefore, in addition to
determining the critical periods during fetal life when exposure to this major stressor is particularly detrimental
to later infant stress responsivity, we can determine how those effects compare with postnatal exposure to the
same stressor. Based on knowledge about the developmental milestones for the neural substrates involved in
the physiological and behavioral responses to stress, we hypothesize in Aim 1 that early gestation stress will
have the greatest effects on infant SNS stress responsivity, but that mid-gestation stress will have the greatest
effects on infant HPA-axis responsivity and their behavioral responses to stress. In Aim 2 we will examine the
maternal HPA axis and SNS functioning during her pregnancy as a mediator of the effects of prenatal IPV on
later infant stress responsivity. Knowledge about the sensitive periods to stress that exist within prenatal life
will have profound implications for pinpointing the cellular and molecular mechanisms that are derailed in the
fetus and responsible for the negative outcomes seen after birth. This knowledge will also greatly inform
strategies for prevention and intervention that will help avoid the negative effects of stress during this
exquisitely sensitive period for human psychological a...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9971543
- **Project number:** 5R01HD085990-05
- **Recipient organization:** MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Gloria Anne Bogat
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $540,456
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2016-09-12 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9971543

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9971543, Timing of prenatal stress and infant regulatory functioning (5R01HD085990-05). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9971543. Licensed CC0.

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