Associations among maternal stress, infant epigenetics, and behavioral and cognitive development across the first few years of life

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT This F31 NRSA application will provide the applicant with the training necessary to achieve their goal of becoming an independently-funded researcher integrating perspectives from developmental psychology, neuroscience, and prevention science. This dissertation project seeks to incorporate epigenetic aging as a biomarker and potential mechanism to explain the association between maternal stress and behavioral and cognitive development over the first few years of life. The application proposes training in: 1) the integration of epigenetic aging into the larger study of maternal stress and child development; 2) the methodology for DNA methylation extraction and analysis; and 3) advanced longitudinal models. The sponsorship team consists of experts in the fields of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Education from both Teachers College, Columbia University and University of Texas-Austin. The resources afforded by these sponsors and institutions will facilitate the applicant’s goal of integrating multimodal and interdisciplinary methods to improve the trajectories of children experiencing early life stress. RESEARCH PROJECT: Maternal stress during pregnancy and early childhood is a robust predictor of deleterious outcomes for children’s cognitive and behavioral development. Epigenetic processes are a powerful mechanism to explain how adverse experiences biologically embed to predict later functioning. Accelerated aging reflects a biological age that exceeds one’s chronological age, and is tightly linked with both early life stress and negative physical and mental health outcomes in adults. However, little is understood about these associations during early childhood. The reported spike in maternal stress since the onset of the COVID- 19 pandemic highlights the urgency with which researchers must examine how stress biologically embeds to predict later functioning. The present study will leverage an existing birth cohort of socioeconomically diverse families from New York City to examine the longitudinal associations among maternal stress, accelerated aging, and cognition and behavioral regulation in early childhood, with the following Aims: 1) Examine the longitudinal, stress-related alterations in epigenetic age across early childhood; 2) Examine biomarkers and cognitive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in mothers and children; and 3) Examine whether accelerated aging predicts cognition and behavioral regulation in childhood. Maternal stress will be assessed both prenatally and at various points throughout the first three of years of the child’s life. Both perceived and physiological measures of stress will be examined in these associations. Children will provide saliva samples at 1-month and 30-months of age to examine epigenetic age and complete well-validated assessments of cognition and behavioral regulation at 30- months. Findings will elucidate the relationships between maternal stress and accelerated aging during childhood and the functional relevance of accelerated aging to children’s behavior and cognition.