Topic: FinnBrain Birth Cohort

The aim of this study was to investigate whether grey matter densities (GMD) in the brain associate with speech disfluency in 120 (65M, 55F) 5-year-old children. Speech disfluency, which was quantified via audio recordings, was measured as a continuous variable, covering a broad spectrum of disfluencies observed in a sample of children participating in the FinnBrain Birth Cohort study. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) of the whole brain was utilised to examine the associations between GMD and speech disfluency. We found negative associations between

Maternal prenatal distress is an important contributor to child neurodevelopmental trajectories but relatively few studies have explored the effect of distress exposure longitudinally across the perinatal period. The aim of this study was to investigate associations between exposure to pre- and postnatal maternal distress and child brain development in 5-year-olds. Mother-child dyads (n=173) were recruited from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort study. Maternal distress was quantified with composite scores of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the anxiety subscale of the Symptom Check

The developmental origins of fear and its variations in individuals are poorly understood. Evidence suggests an attentional bias towards fearful faces emerges around 5-7 months of age. Our prior findings in 8-month-old infants indicate that neonatal left amygdala volumes were positively associated with attention disengagement probability from fearful faces. To our knowledge, this is the first study exploring the underlying white matter tracts. We used neonatal diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data and eye tracking using an overlap paradigm with faces and non-faces as a behavioural measure collec