Orbitofrontal cortex functional connectivity mediates the relationship between fetal growth and childhood impulsivity

Exposure to adversity during the prenatal period may provoke developmental alterations and result in health outcomes later in life. The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a key region for reward-based decision-making and impulsive behavior, is particularly sensitive to adversity. However, it’s unclear whether altered OFC functional connectivity links poor fetal growth to later behavioral outcomes.

Here we show that left OFC and right precentral gyrus functional connectivity mediates the association between being born small for gestational age (SGA) and poor performance in a decision-making assessment. Specifically, SGA is associated with reduced connectivity, while increased connectivity is associated with better decision-making performance. These findings highlight the importance of the prenatal period for healthy development and suggest that OFC-related neurofunctional alterations may represent early markers of vulnerability to later psychopathology and maladaptive behavior, and target individuals for proper intervention.

We are grateful to Julia Bérubé Boutin for creating the brain images. This project was supported by the JPB Foundation through a grant to the JPB Research Network on Toxic Stress: A Project of the Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard University. This work was also funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Santé and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR, PJT-166,066 and PJT-173,237, PI Silveira PP).

Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada João Paulo Maires Hoppe & Patricia Pelufo Silveira Douglas Research Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada João Paulo Maires Hoppe, Olivia Ruge, Roberta Dalle Molle, Guillaume Elgbeili, Qizhou Xia & Patricia Pelufo Silveira Integrated Program in Neurosciences, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada Ludmer Centre for Neuroinformatics and Mental Health, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada Correspondence to Patricia Pelufo Silveira. The authors declare no competing interests. Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Hoppe, J.P.M., Ruge, O., Dalle Molle, R. et al. Orbitofrontal cortex functional connectivity mediates the relationship between fetal growth and childhood impulsivity.