Editorial: Prenatal Depressive Symptoms, Cortical Morphology, and Reward Sensitivity in Preschoolers.

Studies drawing on data from the Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes (GUSTO, https://www.gusto.sg) have provided unprecedented evidence for associations between prenatal maternal mental health symptoms and variations in offspring early brain structural and functional development. Wei et al. expand upon these studies by using data from GUSTO to test for both sex-specific effects of prenatal maternal depressive symptoms (pre-MDS) and to examine whether cortical development mediated the relationship between pre-MDS and child sensitivity to reward and punishment in preschoolers. The study found a fascinating sex-specific pattern. It showed that higher pre-MDS was associated with greater cortical surface area in boys and lower surface area in girls, specifically in areas of the prefrontal cortex, superior temporal gyrus, and superior parietal lobule. Regarding their hypothesized mediation model, their analysis found that superior parietal lobule surface area mediated the association between pre-MDS and sensitivity to reward in girls but not boys. In this editorial, I will discuss some of the implications, limitations, and future directions for this line of research.