Description:

Join DevSci Cluster students for a presentation by Dr. Catherine Monk, PhD. DevSci Cluster will have the special opportunity to attend a luncheon with Dr. Monk. Students interested in attending should RSVP to Stephanie.Crawford@northwestern.edu by Monday November 6th.

Dr. Monk is a professor in the Departments of Psychiatry, Obstetrics & Gynecology at Columbia University.

A Dyad before before Birth: Pregnant Women's Mental Health Affects the Next Generation

Women's experiences during pregnancy - including stress, depression, anxiety -- affect the baby before birth. This presentation will review some of the research in this area, including some showing differences in fetal behavior, newborn brain development, and placental gene regulation, related to women's psychosocial functioning in pregnancy. There is a possible third pathway for the familial inheritance of risk for mental health problems: the impact of pregnant women's toxic stress on fetal and infant brain-behavior development.