Bea Van den Bergh

Flemish Government · Welfare Public Healt and Family

Epigenetic changes are associated with altered behavior and neuropsychiatric disorders and they modify the trajectory of aging. Maternal anxiety during pregnancy is a common environmental challenge for the fetus, causing changes in DNA methylation. Here, we determined the mediating role of DNA methylation and the moderating role of offspring sex on...

Excessive crying and sleep problems affect up to 30% of infants and often coexist. Although usually benign and self-limiting, persistent crying, and sleep problems exceeding 6 months of age need attention as they may impair the mental health of the infant and its family. The source and the impact of these persistent regulatory problems is often not...

Objectives Maternal anxiety during pregnancy is a risk factor for child behavioral/emotional problems. Knowledge about explanatory factors mediating this link is scarce. Maternal anxiety during pregnancy may be an indicator of adverse postnatal environmental conditions, including maternal anxiety and poor parenting, possibly affecting child behavio...

Evidence is building for an association between the level of anxiety experienced by a mother during pregnancy and offspring cognition and structural and functional brain correlates. The current study uses fMRI to examine the association between prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety and brain activity associated with endogenous versus exogenous cogn...

Background One potentially relevant neurophysiological marker of internalizing problems (anxiety/depressive symptoms) is the late positive potential (LPP), as it is related to processing of emotional stimuli. For the first time, to our knowledge, we investigated the value of the LPP as a neurophysiological marker for internalizing problems and spec...

Cognitive and mental health are major determinants of quality of life, allowing integration into society at all ages. Human epidemiological and animal studies indicate that in addition to genetic factors and lifestyle, prenatal environmental influences may program neuropsychiatric disorders in later life. While several human studies have examined t...

In the review article by Adamson, Letourneau and Lebel (J Affect Disord 2018, 241, 117–126) the article of Mennes, Van den Bergh, Lagae & Stiers (Clin Neurophysiolol 2009, 120, 116–1122) was rated as "weak, due to lack of information provided regarding the sample population of mothers". However, Mennes et al. (2009) had referred to previous article...

Prenatal stress and the developing brain: Risks for neurodevelopmental disorders — ERRATUM - Bea R. H. Van den Bergh, Robert Dahnke, Maarten Mennes

The prenatal period is increasingly considered as a crucial target for the primary prevention of neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Understanding their pathophysiological mechanisms remains a great challenge. Our review reveals new insights from prenatal brain development research, involving (epi)genetic research, neuroscience, recent im...

Background Maternal psychological distress during pregnancy is related to adverse child behavioral and emotional outcomes later in life, such as ADHD and anxiety/depression. The underlying mechanisms for this, however, are still largely unknown. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis, with its most important effector hormone cortisol, has be...

Purpose: The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between children's exogenously triggered response inhibition and stuttering. Method: Participants were 18 children who stutter (CWS; mean age = 9;01 years) and 18 children who not stutter (CWNS; mean age = 9;01 years). Participants were matched on age (±3 months) and gender. Resp...

Background: Few studies have examined the relation between anxiety disorders in the postpartum period and cognitive as well as language development in infancy. Aims: This longitudinal study investigated whether anxiety disorder in the postpartum period is linked to infant development at twelve months. A closer look was also taken at a possible l...

Dyspnoea is the aversive cardinal symptom in various prevalent conditions such as respiratory, cardiovascular and neuromuscular diseases and is associated with great individual and socioeconomic burden [1]. Over the past years, several physiological and also psychological factors have been demonstrated to affect the perception of dyspnoea [1, 2]. F...

Accumulating research shows that prenatal exposure to maternal stress increases the risk for behavioral and mental health problems later in life. This review systematically analyzes the available human studies to identify harmful stressors, vulnerable periods during pregnancy, specificities in the outcome and biological correlates of the relation b...

Healthy brain aging is a major determinant of quality of life, allowing integration into society at all ages. Human epidemiological and animal studies indicate that in addition to lifestyle and genetic factors, environmental influences in prenatal life have a major impact on brain aging and age-associated brain disorders. The aim of this review is...

Evidence is building for an association between the level of anxiety experienced by a mother during pregnancy and the cognitive development of her offspring. The current study uses fMRI to examine whether there is an association between prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety and brain activity in 20 year old adolescents. In line with previous result...

In this chapter, we present our recently conceptualized model on Developmental Origins of Behavior, Health, and Disease (DOBHaD) in which we incorporate the results of four of our studies as examples to demonstrate how each topic influenced the model; in addition, we provide a brief overview of relevant literature. The study of DOBHaD encompasses b...

EMOTIES VAN MOEDER BEINVLOEDEN ONTWIKKELING KIND Rachel Verweij en Bea Van den Bergh. Tijdschrift voor Verloskundigen, 2015, 5, 59-60. Veel psychologen dachten het al, maar hun ideeën werden lang beschouwd als'alternatief': de psyche van de moeder beïnvloedt haar kindje, zelfs in de baarmoeder. lnmiddels wordt deze gedachte meer en meer bevestigd...

The long-lasting effects of fetal exposure to early life influences (ELI) such as maternal anxiety, stress, and micronutrient deficiencies as well as mediating and moderating factors are quite well established in animal studies, but remain unclear in humans. Here, we report about effects on cognition, behavior, and emotion in offspring aged 5-20 ye...

Altered stress responsiveness is a risk factor for mental and physical illness. In non-pregnant populations, it is well-known that anxiety can alter the physiological regulation of stress reactivity. Characterization of corresponding risks for pregnant women and their offspring requires greater understanding of how stress reactivity and recovery ar...

In deze RCT werd aangetoond dat intensieve coaching en counseling door een daarvoor opgeleide vroedvrouw resulteren in een verbetering van het psychisch welbevinden bij obese zwangeren. Daarnaast zien we ook een significante daling van de GWT tijdens de zwangerschap. Een mogelijke interactie tussen gedragsverandering (verminderde GWT) en psychologi...

Age-related microstructural differences have been detected using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Although DTI is sensitive to the effects of aging, it is not specific to any underlying biological mechanism, including demyelination. Combining multiexponential T2 relaxation (MET2) and multishell diffusion MRI (dMRI) techniques may elucidate such proc...

The developmental origins of behavior, health, and disease (DOBHaD) hypothesis examines the short- and long-term effects of environmental conditions early in life on phenotypic variations in behavior, health, and disease. The prenatal and early postnatal periods are times of great opportunity and considerable risk, and their influence can extend ov...

Purpose Recent theoretical conceptualizations suggest that dysfluencies in stuttering may arise from several factors, one of them being atypical auditory processing. The main purpose of the present study was to investigate whether speech sound encoding and central auditory discrimination, are affected in children who stutter (CWS). Methods Partici...

Background: Maternal obesity is a growing public health concern in Belgium as well as in other European countries and is now becoming the most common risk factor associated with pregnancy complications with impact on the health of the women and her offspring. At this moment, there is no specific management strategy for obese pregnant women and mot...

Systemic chemotherapy as a treatment against breast cancer patients is known to induce cognitive deficits, related with alterations in diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) measures of the brain's white matter. Using advanced diffusion techiques (DTI, DKI, NODDI) and multicomponent T2 relaxation, the long-term effects of this chemotherapy treatment are as...

Introduction The histopathological basis of “unidentified bright objects” (UBOs), (hyperintense regions seen on T2-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) brain scans in Neurofibromatosis –1 (NF1)) remains unclear. New in vivo MRI-based techniques (multi-exponential T2 relaxation (MET2) and diffusion MR imaging (dMRI)) provide measures relating to microst...

Maternal anxiety during pregnancy has been consistently shown to negatively affect offspring neurodevelopmental outcomes. However, little is known about the impact of positive maternal traits/states during pregnancy on the offspring. The present study was aimed at investigating the effects of the mother’s mindfulness and anxiety during pregnancy on...

Active anxiety disorders have lasting detrimental effects on pregnant mothers and their offspring but it is unknown if historical, non-active, maternal anxiety disorders have similar effects. Anxiety-related conditions, such as reduced autonomic cardiac control, indicated by reduced heart rate variability (HRV) could persist despite disorder resolu...

To examine the association between interpregnancy weight change and the risk for adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes. All live-born singleton births delivered at 21-42 weeks of gestation in women who had their first two consecutive births between 2009 and 2011 in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium) and who were included in the Study Center f...

Orienting to salient events in the environment is a first step in the development of attention in young infants. Electrophysiological studies have indicated that in newborns and young infants, sounds with widely distributed spectral energy, such as noise and various environmental sounds, as well as sounds widely deviating from their context elicit...

Background: Recently, mindfulness-based interventions are evaluated for decreasing stress during pregnancy, since prenatal stress is known to have negative effects on the unborn child . Research on the effects of maternal mindfulness on the child, however, is lacking. To our knowledge we are the first to investigate whether the level of prenatal mi...

Exposure to atypical events during specific intrauterine periods may induce reprogramming of fetal brain development and lead to postnatal problems in behavior, emotions, and cognition (Van den Bergh et al., 2005). We studied the association between prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety and infant auditory information processing. Seventy pregnant w...

An increasing number of women are working; consequently they have to deal with various job insecurities. Previous research showed that antenatal maternal psychosocial stressors, e.g., job insecurity, are associated with adverse postnatal outcomes. As it has not been examined whether job insecurity is related to alteration in information processing,...

Worldwide the incidence of maternal obesity (i.e., a body mass index (BMI > = 30)) is rising; it ranges from 1.8% to 25.3%. Obesity during pregnancy may program offspring behavior, health, and disease. The link between obesity in pregnancy and infant neurocognitive development is understudied. Here we examine the association between BMI at the star...

Otte, R.A., Braeken, M.A.K.A, Winkler, I., Van den Bergh, B.R.H.M. (2013). Anxious bodies: the association between somatic anxiety complaints during pregnancy and infant auditory information processing. Psychophysiology: vol. 50. Issue Supplement S1, S48-S48. Annual Meeting of the Society-for-Psychophysiological-Research. Florence: Italy, 02-06 Oct...

Physiological reactivity to behavioral or psychological stressors has long been regarded as a potential contributor to individual differences in cardiovascular risk. For pregnant women it is important to cope effectively with stressors, not only for their own health but also for the health of her (un)born child. Anxiety and stress during pregnancy...

Our first objective was to compare the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (8-12 years) with that of a healthy reference group, and to compare glycated hemoglobin (A1C) values of these children to recommended guidelines. Our second objective was to examine how goal disturbance and coping behaviour were r...

Does Prenatal Exposure to Maternal Anxiety Influence Information Processing in Two-month-Olds Infants? An Auditory ERP Study Background. Exposure to atypical events during specific intrauterine periods may induce reprogramming of fetal brain development and influence postnatal cognitive development. Our study aimed to assess the influence of prena...

Background: The psychological health in obese women during pregnancy has been poorly studied. Objective: To compare levels of anxiety and depressed mood during pregnancy in obese versus normal-weight women. Methods: 63 obese pregnant women and 156 normal-weight controls were included prospectively before 15 weeks of gestation. Levels of state...

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether previously reported parental questionnaire-based differences in inhibitory control (IC; Eggers, De Nil, & Van den Bergh, 2010) would be supported by direct measurement of IC using a computer task. Participants were 30 children who stutter (CWS; mean age=7;05 years) and 30 children who not stutter...

Objective: We aimed to describe the weight status of obese mothers 6 months after delivery and examine its relationship to important sociodemographical, behavioral, and psychological variables. Design and methods: Postpartum data from an interventional trial in obese pregnant women (n = 197), conducted in three regional hospitals, between March...

The extraction of task-related single trial ERP features has recently gained much interest, in particular in simultaneous EEG-fMRI applications. In this study, a specific decomposition known as parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) was used, in order to retrieve the task-related activity from the raw signals. Using visual detection task data, acquired...

Correctly processing rapid sequences of sounds is essential for developmental milestones, such as language acquisition. We investigated the sensitivity of two-month-old infants to violations of a temporal regularity, by recording event-related brain potentials (ERP) in an auditory oddball paradigm from 36 waking and 40 sleeping infants. Standard to...

OBJECTIVE: Lifestyle intervention could help obese pregnant women to limit their weight gain during pregnancy and improve their psychological comfort, but has not yet been evaluated in randomized controlled trials. We evaluated whether a targeted antenatal lifestyle intervention programme for obese pregnant women influences gestational weight gain...

Both pre‐pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and gestational weight gain (GWG) are important determinants of a healthy pregnancy outcome and may show important variation. To study the influence of socio‐demographic and obstetrical correlates on pre‐pregnancy BMI and GWG, data of 54 022 singleton term pregnancies were analysed using adjusted regression...

The developmental origins of behavior, health and disease hypothesis proposes short- and long-term consequences of the developmental environment impact on phenotypic variations in behavior, health and disease. Short-term consequences, such as alterations in fetal or infant physiological systems, are seen as an adaptation to the environment, resulti...

Descriptors: Lifetime Anxiety Disorder, pregnancy, heart rate variability Introduction: During pregnancy women have to cope with many emotional and physical changes. Most women cope well with these changes, but psychopathology can interfere with this adaptation and consequentially affect their health. In general, (maternal) psychopathology is assoc...

OBJECTIVE: Lifestyle intervention could help obese pregnant women to limit their weight gain during pregnancy and improve their psychological comfort, but has not yet been evaluated in randomized controlled trials. We evaluated whether a targeted antenatal lifestyle intervention programme for obese pregnant women influences gestational weight gain...

Descriptors: mindfulness, pregnancy, heart rate variability Psychopharmaca are effective in reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety, but their use during pregnancy is often not appropriate. Pregnant women express a desire for nonpharmaceutical treatments. Mindfulness-based interventions are non-invasive options for dealing with negative affecti...

Background: Prevalence rates of psychosocial stress during pregnancy are substantial. Evidence for associations between psychosocial stress and birth outcomes is inconsistent. This study aims to identify and characterize different clusters of pregnant women, each with a distinct pattern of psychosocial stress, and investigate whether birth outcome...

Human studies that have investigated the association between caffeine intake during pregnancy and offspring's behavioral outcomes are scant and inconclusive. We prospectively investigated the association between maternal caffeine intake during pregnancy and children's problem behavior at age 5 to 6 years. Mediation by fetal growth restriction and g...

This exploratory study investigates the influence of maternal cortisol and emotional state during pregnancy on fetal intrauterine growth (IUG). We expected higher basal cortisol levels, or more depressive and anxious complaints during pregnancy, to be associated with slower IUG and lower birth weight. A total of 91 pregnant women were recruited fro...

SP7 Maturation of the mismatch response (MMR) in infants from 2 to 9 months: A longitudinal ERP study RA OTTE1, M BRAEKEN1, I WINKLER2,3, BRH VAN DEN BERGH1,4,5 1 Department of Developmental and Clinical Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands; 2 Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary; 3 Instit...

Caffeine intake during pregnancy and risk of problem behaviour in 5–6 year old children EM LOOMANS1,2, L HOFLAND3,4, O VAN DER STELT1, MF VAN DER WAL2, HM KOOT4, BRH VAN DEN BERGH1,5,6, TGM VRIJKOTTE3 1 Department of Psychology, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands; 2 Department of Epidemiology, Documentation and Health Promotion, Public...

Fetal sleep states emerge during the third trimester of pregnancy and involve multiple interconnected neuronal networks. We examined whether fetal sleep characteristics predict child and adolescent self-regulation in a non-clinical sample (study group, n=25; reference group, n=48). Combined recordings of three sleep variables (fetal heart rate, bod...

Since several years, neuroscience research started to focus on multimodal approaches. One such multimodal approach is the combination of electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, no standard integration procedure has been established so far. One promising data-driven approach consists of a joint decompo...

Prenatal exposure to maternal anxiety is associated with sensory-cognitive development in two month olds. Background: Processes studied under the Developmental origins of Behavior, Health and Disease (DOBHaD)-concept encompass variations in both typical and atypical developmental and maturational patterns which are seen as adaptation to the environ...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether previously reported questionnaire-based differences in self-regulatory behaviors (Eggers, De Nil, & Van den Bergh, 2009, 2010) between children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS) would also be reflected in their underlying attentional networks. Participants consisted of 41 CWS...

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) modulates heartbeat intervals responding to inputs from its different branches, resulting in periodicities that occur on different time scales. Internal and external perturbations are continuously interrupting the periodic behavior, making the heartbeat intervals quasi-periodic. Phase-rectified signal averaging (P...

While mediating and moderating factors and the long-lasting effect of exposure to prenatal maternal anxiety and stress (PMAS) on offspring behavior and (neuro)physiology are quite well-established in animal studies, in humans they are only beginning to be understood. In order to gain more insight in mechanisms underlying developmental (re)programmi...

This longitudinal prospective study examined the relation between maternal anxiety during pregnancy and specific aspects of children's cognitive functioning at age five. Antenatal maternal state-anxiety was measured around the 16th week of pregnancy. Children's neurocognitive functioning was examined using a simple reaction time (RT) task, and a ch...

Pregnancy is associated with substantial changes in the cardiovascular system.These changes are controlled by the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The ANS plays a key role in the adaptation of the maternal body in nurturing the fetus. Maladaptation may have negative effects on the child’s cognitive, emotional and behavioral development. A malfunctio...

The Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis studies the short- and long-term consequences of the conditions of the developmental environment for phenotypic variations in health and disease. Central to this hypothesis is the idea of interdependence of developmental influences, genes, and environment. Developmental programming...

24th Congress Meeting of European-College-of-Neuropsychopharmacology Sep 03-07, 2011 , Paris, FRANCE

Effects of Maternal Anxiety during Pregnancy on Novelty Processing in Two-Month-Old Infants. An ERP Study. Renée A. Otte1, Marijke A.K.A. Braeken1, Bea R.H. Van den Bergh1, István Winkler2,3. 1Department of Clinical and Developmental Psychology, Tilburg University, Netherlands; 2Deparment of Experimental Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, H...