Cortical Cross-Frequency Coupling Is Affected by in utero Exposure to Antidepressant Medication

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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

Date

2022-03-03

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en

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12

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Frontiers in Neuroscience, Volume 16, pp. 1-12

Abstract

Up to five percent of human infants are exposed to maternal antidepressant medication by serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SRI) during pregnancy, yet the SRI effects on infants’ early neurodevelopment are not fully understood. Here, we studied how maternal SRI medication affects cortical frequency-specific and cross-frequency interactions estimated, respectively, by phase-phase correlations (PPC) and phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) in electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings. We examined the cortical activity in infants after fetal exposure to SRIs relative to a control group of infants without medical history of any kind. Our findings show that the sleep-related dynamics of PPC networks are selectively affected by in utero SRI exposure, however, those alterations do not correlate to later neurocognitive development as tested by neuropsychological evaluation at two years of age. In turn, phase-amplitude coupling was found to be suppressed in SRI infants across multiple distributed cortical regions and these effects were linked to their neurocognitive outcomes. Our results are compatible with the overall notion that in utero drug exposures may cause subtle, yet measurable changes in the brain structure and function. Our present findings are based on the measures of local and inter-areal neuronal interactions in the cortex which can be readily used across species, as well as between different scales of inspection: from the whole animals to in vitro preparations. Therefore, this work opens a framework to explore the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neurodevelopmental SRI effects at all translational levels.

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Funding Information: This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (Suomen Akatemia): 321235, 313242, 288220, and 310445; Sigrid Jusélius Foundation (Sigrid Juséliuksen Säätiö); Foundation for Pediatric Research (Lastentautien Tutkimussäätiö); and Finnish Brain Foundation (Suomen Aivosäätiö). Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 Tokariev, Oberlander, Videman and Vanhatalo.

Keywords

antidepressant, brain network, depression, EEG, infant, neurodevelopment, pregnancy, SRI

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Citation

Tokariev, A, Oberlander, V C, Videman, M & Vanhatalo, S 2022, ' Cortical Cross-Frequency Coupling Is Affected by in utero Exposure to Antidepressant Medication ', Frontiers in Neuroscience, vol. 16, 803708, pp. 1-12 . https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2022.803708