Can a Mum Pass Depression to Her Daughter?

Lisa Franchi February 12, 2016

A new study has shown for the first time that a structure of the brain circuitry known as corticolimbic system - is more likely to be passed down from mothers to daughters than from mothers to sons or from fathers to children of either gender.

Said part of the brain governs emotional regulation and processing and plays a role in mood disorders, including depression. It covers the amygdala, hippocampus, anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

The findings do not mean however that mothers are responsible for their daughters’ depression. According to Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, a UCSF associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Francisco, the lead author of the study, many factors play a role in depression. These include social environment and life experiences. Genetics is just one.

"But this is the first study to bridge animal and human clinical research and show a possible matrilineal transmission of human corticolimbic circuitry, which has been implicated in depression, by scanning both parents and offspring," said Hoeft. "It opens the door to a whole new avenue of research looking at intergenerational transmission patterns in the human brain."

In the study, Hoeft and his team used fMRI scan to look at the intergenerational transmission of the pattern of brain structures. She said this allowed them to better understand depression and other neuropsychiatric conditions, as most conditions seem to show intergenerational transmission pattern. "Anxiety, autism, addition, schizophrenia, dyslexia, you name it - brain patterns inherited from both mothers and fathers have an impact on just about all of them."

In their next research, the team will study brain structures in families where children have been conceived and delivered using different types of in vitro fertilization (IVF). "With donor eggs, there is no maternal genetic input, but there is maternal prenatal and postnatal influence," Hoeft explained. By studying these different family groups, "we will for the very first time be able to examine, and hopefully distinguish between, the effects of genetics, prenatal environment and postnatal environment on brain function, structure, and cognitive function." she added.

Their findings were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Source of this article:

The Journal of Neuroscience