Kathleen M. Gustafson

University of Kansas Medical Center · Department of Neurology

Fetal biomagnetometry offers an unprecedented opportunity to study the longitudinal development of the human fetus in a noninvasive manner. Magnetic fields emanating from the electrical currents of the fetal body pass through the maternal body with little distortion, making it possible to distinguish electrophysiologic activity of the heart, diaphr...

Maternal–infant equilibrium occurs when cord blood docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is less than or equal to maternal DHA at delivery. Equilibrium may be an indicator of sufficient DHA for optimal fetal and infant neurodevelopment. The purpose of this study was to test the effect of maternal DHA supplementation on equilibrium status and fetal neurodevelo...

There have been reports of abnormal retinal neurotransmission determined by electroretinography in boys with Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy. Dystrophin may play a role in transmitting signals between photoreceptors and the excitatory synapse of the ON-bipolar cell. These electroretinographic changes appeared to be limited to the rod ON-path...

Background: Hyperinsulinemia associated with equine metabolic syndrome and pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction is a risk factor for laminitis. Research in other species has shown elevated body iron levels as both a predictor and consequence of insulin resistance. In humans, this is known as dysmetabolic hyperferritinemia. Aim: To explore the r...

Background: Cognitive reserve may protect against cognitive decline. Objective: This cross-sectional study investigated the association between cognitive reserve and physiological measures of cognitive workload in older adults with cognitive impairment. Methods: 29 older adults with cognitive impairment (age: 75±6, 11 (38%) women, MoCA: 20±7)...

Background Although growing evidence links beta-amyloid (Aβ) and neuronal hyperexcitability in preclinical mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a similar association in humans is yet to be established. The first aim of the study was to determine the association between elevated Aβ (Aβ+) and cognitive processes measured by the P3 event-related...

Background Two randomized trials found women with low blood docosahexaenoic acid (DHA; an omega 3 fatty acid) had fewer early preterm births (<34 weeks gestation) if they were assigned to high dose DHA supplementation, however, there is currently no capacity for clinicians who care for pregnancies to obtain a blood assessment of DHA. Determining a...

The third positive peak of the event‐related potential (ERP P3) is understood to reflect neural resource utilization during working memory. We previously showed lower P3 ERP amplitude of the task effect in older adults with preclinical Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The aim of this study was to compare changes from baseline to 1‐year follow‐up in P3 ERP...

Background: Cognitive reserve may protect against cognitive decline. However, its effect on physiological measures of cognitive workload in adults with cognitive impairments is unclear. Objective: The aim was to determine the association between cognitive reserve and physiological measures of cognitive workload in older adults with and without cogn...

Purpose To investigate the feasibility of using music listening by adults with fibromyalgia (FM) as a potential tool for reducing pain sensitivity. Patients and methods We report results from a double-blind two-arm parallel randomized pilot study (NCT04059042) in nine participants with FM. Pain tolerance and threshold were measured objectively usi...

Achieving maternal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) status equal to or greater than the infant’s DHA status at delivery is known as maternal–newborn DHA equilibrium (EQ) and is thought to be important for optimizing newborn DHA status throughout infancy. The objective of this study was to determine the daily DHA intake during pregnancy most likely to res...

Background Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is an essential omega-3 fatty acid that has well-established benefits for the fetus. DHA also has the potential to influence the health of the mother, but this area is understudied. Objective The objective of this secondary analysis was to determine if DHA was related to maternal heart rate (HR) and heart rate...

Background: Hyperinsulinemia associated with pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID) and/or equine metabolic syndrome is well documented to put horses at high risk of laminitis. While dietary control of simple sugars and starch is the most effective therapy to control hyperinsulinemia, some horses fail to respond. Case descriptions: Ten hor...

The pupillary response reflects mental effort (or cognitive workload) during cognitive and/or motor tasks including standing postural control. EEG has been shown to be a non-invasive measure to assess the cortical involvement of postural control. The purpose of this study was to understand the effect of increasing postural task difficulty on the pu...

Background Maternal intake of eggs and nutrients contained within eggs during pregnancy have the potential to impact fetal neurodevelopment; however, this area is understudied. The purpose of this study was to determine whether maternal egg and choline intake and nutrient interactions between choline, lutein and zeaxanthin (L/Z), and DHA predict fe...

Purpose To investigate the feasibility of using music listening by adults with fibromyalgia (FM) as a potential tool for reducing pain sensitivity. Patients and methods We report results from a double-blind two-arm parallel randomized pilot study ( NCT04059042 ) in 9 participants with FM. Pain tolerance and threshold were measured objectively usin...

Objective Pupillary response reflects mental effort (or cognitive workload) during challenging cognitive and postural control conditions. EEG is more established as a non-invasive measure to assess cortical involvement of postural control. The purpose of this study was to understand the pupillary response under increasing postural task difficulty a...

Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) intake was estimated in pregnant women between 12- and 20-weeks’ gestation using the National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Diet History Questionnaire-II (DHQ-II) and a 7-question screener designed to capture DHA intake (DHA Food Frequency Questionnaire, DHA-FFQ). Results from both methods were compared to red blood cell phosp...

Emerging evidence from animal and human studies shows that beta‐amyloid (Aβ) may induce neuronal hyperexcitability in the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Electroencephalography (EEG) offers unparalleled temporal resolution in tracing distinct neurophysiological processes even in preclinical AD. The aim of this pilot study was to determine...

The P3 event‐related potential (ERP) is typically reduced and delayed in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The hippocampus is a core regulator of the P3 ERP. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between hippocampal volume and P3 peak amplitude and latency in cognitively normal older adults with (Aβ+) and without elevated...

Background: Growing evidence links beta-amyloid (Aβ) and neuronal hyperexcitability in preclinical mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The aim of this study was to compare neuronal excitability between cognitively normal amyloid positive (CNAβ+) and those without elevated amyloid (CNAβ-) older adults. We hypothesized CNAβ+ participants would...

Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) is a neurodevelopmental genetic disorder characterized by multiple system involvement with hypotonia, poor suck with feeding difficulties, growth and other hormone deficiencies, intellectual disability, and behavioral problems with childhood onset of hyperphagia resulting in obesity, if not externally controlled. Transcr...

Cognitive workload is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of performance in cognitive tests and daily life activities. Cognitive workload is a measure of physical and mental effort allocation to a task, which can be determined through self-report or physiological measures. However, the reliability and validity of these measures have...

Cognitive workload (mental effort) is a measure of attention allocation to a task, which can be administered through self-report or physiological measures. Cognitive workload is increasingly recognized as an important determinant of performance in cognitive tests and daily life activities. However, the reliability and validity of these measures hav...

Event-related potentials (ERPs) offer unparalleled temporal resolution in tracing distinct electrophysiological processes related to normal and pathological cognitive aging. The stability of ERPs in older individuals with a vast range of cognitive ability has not been established. In this test-retest reliability study, 39 older individuals (age 74....

Maternal obesity is an established risk factor for poor infant neurodevelopmental outcomes; however, the link between maternal weight and fetal development in utero is unknown. We investigated whether maternal obesity negatively influences fetal autonomic nervous system (ANS) development. Fetal heart rate variability (HRV) is an index of the ANS th...

The ontogenetic development of an individual is mainly determined by the phylogenetic development of its population. The analysis of heart rate patterns according to those characteristics of phylogeny and ontogeny is predestinated for prenatal diagnosis with implication for improved prenatal care and the ultimate endpoint of better health over the...

Critical or sensitive periods in the life of an organism during which certain experiences or conditions may exert disproportionate influence (either for harm or benefit) on long-term developmental outcomes have been the subject of investigation for over a century. This chapter reviews research in the context of the development of social preferences...

Event related potentials (ERPs) offer unparalleled temporal resolution in tracing distinct electrophysiological processes related to normal and pathological cognitive aging. The stability of ERPs in older individuals, who inherently show more intraindividual variability in cognitive functions, has not been established. In this test-retest reliabili...

Introduction: Offsprings from a prenatal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation trial, in which pregnant women were assigned to placebo or 600mg DHA/day, were followed to determine the effect of prenatal DHA supplementation on the behavior and brain function at 5.5 years (n=81 placebo, n=86 supplemented). Methods: Event-related potentials (ERP)...

Recent meta analyses suggest there is a common brain network involved in processing emotion in music and sounds. However, no studies have directly compared the neural substrates of equivalent emotional Western classical music and emotional environmental sounds. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we investigated whether brain activation in...

Objective: In fetal diagnosis the myriad and diversity of heart rate variability (HRV) indices prevents a comparable routine evaluation of disturbances in fetal development and well-being. The work aims at the extraction of a small set of HRV key indices that could help to establish a universal, overarching tool to screen for any disturbance. App...

Objective: In fetal diagnosis the myriad and diversity of heart rate variability (HRV) indices prevents a comparable routine evaluation of disturbances in fetal development and well-being. The work aims at the extraction of a small set of HRV key indices that could help to establish a universal, overarching tool to screen for any disturbance. A...

Background: Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is a long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid that has been linked to improved vision and cognition in postnatal feeding studies and has been consistently associated with reduction of early preterm birth in prenatal supplementation trials. This is a report of the first long-term follow-up of infants from mothers...

The present study sought to determine whether supplementation of long‐chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) during the first year of life influenced brain function, structure, and metabolism at 9 years of age. Newborns were randomly assigned to consume formula containing either no LCPUFA (control) or formula with 0.64% of total fatty acids as...

As previously reported, intention-to-treat findings from our phase III randomized clinical trial found that a supplement of 600 mg docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)/day during the last half of pregnancy reduced the incidence of early preterm birth (ePTB, <34 weeks gestation) and very low birth weight (VLBW < 1500 g) offspring. Given the potentially immens...

Objectives: The goal of the current pilot project was to probe the resting-state magnetoencephalography (MEG) in individuals with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES) and ascertain if there is evidence for frontal temporal cortical hyperexcitability, as evidenced by increased focal coherence in these regions. Methods: Six patients with PNES...

Limbic and frontal structures are largely implicated in panic disorder (PD). Decreased coherence imaging values, as determined by magnetoencephalography (MEG), are suggestive of decreased or inefficient communication among these structures. We have previously demonstrated that coherence source imaging (CSI) values could be similar or higher in some...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Recent studies show that maternal obesity is associated with impaired offspring neurodevelopmental outcomes. The mechanism underlying the association is unclear. However, there is evidence to suggest a role for intra-uterine exposure to inflammation and insulin resistance (IR). We aimed to determine if maternal IR and inf...

Using fetal biomagnetometry, this study measured changes in fetal heart rate to assess discrimination of two rhythmically different languages (English and Japanese). Two-minute passages in English and Japanese were read by the same female bilingual speaker. Twenty-four mother-fetus pairs (mean gestational age=35.5 weeks) participated. Fetal magneto...

The DHA Intake and Measurement of Neural Development (DIAMOND) trial represents one of only a few studies of the long-term dose-response effects of LCPUFA-supplemented formula feeding during infancy. The trial contrasted the effects of four formulations: 0.00% docosahexaenoic acid (DHA)/0.00% arachidonic acid (ARA), 0.32% DHA/0.64% ARA, 0.64% DHA/0...

Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) have been shown to be necessary for early retinal and brain development, but long-term cognitive benefits of LCPUFA in infancy have not been definitively established. The present study sought to determine whether LCPUFA supplementation during the first year of life would result in group differences in...

Background: Results of randomized trials on the effects of prenatal docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) on infant cognition are mixed, but most trials have used global standardized outcomes, which may not be sensitive to effects of DHA on specific cognitive domains. Methods: Women were randomized to 600 mg/d DHA or a placebo for the last two trimesters o...

Background: Pregnancy is associated with an increased sympathetic state, which can be exacerbated by gestational conditions. Research has shown that exercise during pregnancy lowers heart rate (HR) and can attenuate the symptoms of gestational conditions associated with increased sympathetic control. However, changes in maternal heart autonomic fu...

It has been shown that short-term direct interaction between maternal and fetal heart rates may take place and that this interaction is affected by the rate of maternal respiration. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of maternal aerobic exercise during pregnancy on the occurrence of fetal-maternal heart rate synchronization. Methods...

Our research aim was twofold; a) to determine if maternal physical activity during pregnancy would influence the development of fetal cardiac autonomic control and b) whether HRV could serve as a sensitive indicator of fetal programming effects. Pregnant women with singleton pregnancies participated in a longitudinal study. Magnetocardiograms (MCG)...

Maternal leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) improves cardiac autonomic function in the fetus. The specific physical activity attributes (e.g., mode) that produce this benefit are not well understood. To determine if more time spent performing non-continuous LTPA during pregnancy is significantly associated with lower fetal heart rate (HR) and in...

The effect of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LCPUFA) intake on cognitive development is controversial. Most randomized trials have assessed cognition at 18 mo, although significant development of cognitive abilities (early executive function) emerge later. The objective was to evaluate cognition beyond 18 mo and longitudinal cognitive chang...

DHA (22:6n-3) supplementation during infancy has been associated with lower heart rate (HR) and improved neurobehavioral outcomes. We hypothesized that maternal DHA supplementation would improve fetal cardiac autonomic control and newborn neurobehavior. Pregnant women were randomized to 600 mg/day of DHA or placebo oil capsules at 14.4 (+/- 4) week...

Background: Observational studies associate higher intakes of n-3 (omega-3) long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFAs) during pregnancy with higher gestation duration and birth size. The results of randomized supplementation trials using various n-3 LCPUFA sources and amounts are mixed. Objective: We tested the hypothesis that 600 mg/d of...

Objective: We tested the hypothesis that regular intermittent exercise (i.e. yoga) during pregnancy is associated with changes in fetal cardiac development. Methods: We used magnetocardiograms from 32 and 36 week fetuses (N=60). We marked normal R-peaks to measure heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV). Activity questionnaires were used...

We explored whether maternal exercise during pregnancy moderates the effect of fetal breathing movements on fetal cardiac autonomic control assessed by metrics of heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV). Thirty women were assigned to Exercise or Control group (n=15/group) based on the modifiable physical activity questionnaire (MPAQ). Magn...

Our previous research found lower fetal HR and increased HR variability (HRV) in women who exercised during pregnancy. This finding is similar to the adult heart training response at rest due to aerobic exercise. Dose-response associations have been found between physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness in adults. Therefore, our objective wa...

Using a dedicated fetal biomagnetometer, we identified and characterized the fetal diaphragmatic magnetomyogram (dMMG) generated during breathing movements and reported the effects on fetal cardiac autonomic control during breathing and non-breathing movements (apnea). We next used this method to investigate fetal heart rate (HR) and heart rate var...

Breathing movements are one of the earliest fetal motor behaviors to emerge and are a hallmark of fetal well-being. Fetal respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) has been documented but efforts to quantify the influence of breathing on heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) are difficult due to the episodic nature of fetal breathing activity....

A double-blind, randomized, controlled, parallel-group prospective trial was conducted to determine whether a dose-response existed for four different levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation on the cognitive performance of infants. A total of 122 term infants were fed one of four different formulas varying in their DHA composition (0.0...

We previously reported decreased fetal heart rate (HR) and increased heart rate variability (HRV) as a result of regular maternal aerobic exercise. These results suggest exposure to exercise throughout gestation influences prenatal cardiac autonomic control. It is unknown if these differences persist into the postnatal period. Objective: We follow...

The cardiovascular benefits of exercise are well known for adults and promoted by AHA, ACSM, and the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. However, few studies have determined how exercise during pregnancy influences the cardiovascular system of mother and baby. Magnetocardiograms (MCG) were performed during and after pregnancy to de...

The range of human milk docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) concentrations worldwide is much broader than the range explored in randomized clinical trials to date. The primary objective was to determine the effect of 4 amounts of DHA supplementation on the visual acuity of formula-fed infants at 12 mo of age. Secondary objectives were to evaluate visual acu...

Previous studies using ultrasound technology showed that fetal heart rate (HR) may be responsive to maternal aerobic exercise. Although it is recognized that cardiac autonomic control may be influenced by the intrauterine environment, little is known about how maternal exercise affects fetal heart development. This study tested the hypothesis that...

Docosahexaenoic acid is a long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid that is found in large quantity in the brain and which has repeatedly been observed to be related in positive ways to both cognitive function and cardiovascular health. The mechanisms through which docosahexaenoic acid affects cognition are not well understood, but in this article, we...