This article is specifically not just about "during pregnancy" though. Quote:
"It suggested that trauma might have affected the mothers' eggs decades before her children were conceived, while she was herself a child."
"They gave a male mouse a mild electric shock as it smelled a cherry blossom scent, stimulating a fear response to the odor. The response was accompanied by epigenetic changes in its brain and sperm. Intriguingly, the male offspring of the shocked mice demonstrated a similar fear of cherry blossoms—as well as epigenetic changes in their brain and sperm—without being exposed to the shock. These effects were passed down for two generations. In other words, the lesson the grandfather mouse learned, that the cherry blossom scent means danger, was transmitted to its son and grandson."
> epigenetic markers .. You influence .. and pass on to .. grandchildren (as women..)
AFAICT, a woman significantly influences markers on the eggs (future grandchild) developing in her child (fetus/embrio) in her womb, but at the same time, she influences all the other cells (child). Some (even critical) processes are probably more influenced by the grandmother, but I wouldn't minimize the mother's effect.
> Something that has struck out to me for many years now is the rather striking lack of reporting on the incredibly strong correlation between parental (both maternal/paternal) age at time of conception and ASM.
Thee's a strong link to paternal age that seems well established. Maternal age effects seem to be all over the map: I've seen weaker positive correlation with advancing maternal age than paternal age, no correlation with maternal age, and negative correlation with maternal age in different studies (possibly with varying degrees of controlling for other known contributors; e.g., apparently women with autism tend to have first children older, which by itself can create the impression of a maternal age effect of not controlled for.)
> Something that has struck out to me for many years now is the rather striking lack of reporting on the incredibly strong correlation between parental (both maternal/paternal) age at time of conception and ASM.
I thought this was common knowledge? I’ve certainly read this frequently and it’s something that is brought up (anecdotally) by OB/GYNs as women enter their 30’s. My wife and several family members ruefully will tell stories about how their doc let them know that they’ll be considered of “advanced maternal age” when they hit 35. They were then reminded of the increased risk of birth defects, autism, and complications.
> But also, the woman's body would likely break with that schedule of being pregnant.
Bach’s wife had 20 children. Only 10 of them survived. I literally can’t even imagine having one.
My wife went through several and would have cheerfully had many more but her autoimmune system turned against her. She’s a self-admitted bad mother, but absolutely loved being pregnant.
I've read literature that the hormone fluctuations resulting from pregnancy, and from parenting regardless of sex actually trigger the destruction of particular parts of the brain in humans.
This is a long shot, but I've always wondered if it might be genetically related to the part of the brain responsible for "abandon one of the babies to escape predator" type reasoning that you see in animals with litters. Something that would have been selected out of human evolution fairly quickly.
The East Germans did some very interesting research into the impact of stress and trauma (the sort of stress you expense while being area-bombed during the latter stages of WW2) on expectant mothers and their unborn children. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to have made its way online (I suspect a lot of it was unethical, so people are unwilling to cite it).
I mean, good job discrediting your own comment? It's pretty obvious pregnant women aren't the well-studied population of humans allowing you to discredit a study in mice.
> to understand why so many pregnancies fail and how we might be able to prevent that from happening
Are we sure that's a good idea? I've read that one of the reason for early pregnancy failure is that the embryo is not fit enough and it would be a waste of time and resources to commit to it.
Another very counterintuitive finding is that if you try to implant embryos in various tissues (brain, liver, ...), the one in which is the hardest is the uterus! Because it's actively fighting against the embryo.
> the placental barrier is probably the weakest such barrier
At least, in humans (and other primates and rodents, but not most mammals). Human embryos/fetuses receive more nourishment and achieve more growth during prenatal development in part because the placenta invades the uterine wall much more—for lack of a better word—parasitically than in other mammalian species. That's great for a lot of developmental stuff for the fetus, but it does make transfer of (say) drugs considerably easier. (It also is the source of a lot of the common maternal complications in human pregnancy and is the reason one should at least be in contact with medical doctors while pregnant, even if a low-intervention or home birth plan is intended....)
> is that the success probabilities of pregnancies are more or less independent
Or rather, if they demonstrate dependence, there's probably a factor outside of the pregnancy that's causing the problem (environmental stressors, toxins, etc.)
"It suggested that trauma might have affected the mothers' eggs decades before her children were conceived, while she was herself a child."
"They gave a male mouse a mild electric shock as it smelled a cherry blossom scent, stimulating a fear response to the odor. The response was accompanied by epigenetic changes in its brain and sperm. Intriguingly, the male offspring of the shocked mice demonstrated a similar fear of cherry blossoms—as well as epigenetic changes in their brain and sperm—without being exposed to the shock. These effects were passed down for two generations. In other words, the lesson the grandfather mouse learned, that the cherry blossom scent means danger, was transmitted to its son and grandson."
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