Superstorm Sandy exposure is associated with neurobehavioral phenotypes and brain structure alterations in childhood: A machine learning approach.

Introduction: Prenatal maternal stress (PNMS), including exposure to natural disasters, has been shown to serve as a risk factor for future child psychopathology and suboptimal brain development, particularly among brain regions shown to be sensitive to stress and trauma exposure. However, statistical approaches deployed in most studies are usually constrained by a limited number of variables for the sake of statistical power. Explainable machine learning, on the other hand, enables the study of high data dimension and offers novel insights into the prominent subset of behavioral phenotypes and brain regions most susceptible to PNMS.

Prenatal exposure to a natural disaster and early development of psychiatric disorders during the preschool years: stress in pregnancy study.

Background: Growing evidence shows an association between in utero exposure to natural disasters and child behavioral problems, but we still know little about the development of specific psychopathology in preschool-aged children.

Methods: Preschool children (n = 163, mean age = 3.19, 85.