POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION: The amygdala to detect it?

Around 80% of women will suffer from more or less severe and more or less lasting “baby blues” after the birth of their child. The period of depression is normally brief and disappears within a few days. But around 1 in 7 women develop real postpartum depression, which can affect the building of the relationship between mother and baby and can have long-term consequences on the child’s development.

The research is “one of the first trials to compare the brain activity of pregnant and non-pregnant women. The ability to regulate emotions is essential to mental health, and this interaction is the researchers’ starting point.

The study is carried out by a consortium of European researchers, including a team of neurologists from the University of Tübingen (Germany), among 15 pregnant women, between 5 and 6 months of pregnancy, in good health and presenting very high estrogen levels (due to pregnancy), compared to 32 non-pregnant women, whose estrogen levels fluctuated naturally, as occurs during the menstrual cycle. The participants underwent an MRI scanner and during the examination, had to view disturbing images. During this task, participants were invited to regulate their emotional state (using cognitive reappraisal). The analysis identifies that:

• in healthy pregnant women, activity in a specific area of ​​the brain, the amygdala, is linked to the regulation of negative emotions and the tendency to depressive symptoms;
• during MRI examination, pregnant women who present greater activity in the amygdala when regulating their emotions are those who are least able to control their emotions; the amygdala being a small almond-shaped brain region located at the base of the brain, which manages learning, memory and emotions and is involved in maternal behavior and caregiving;

• pregnant women with this greater activity in the amygdala are also those who present the most symptoms of depression;

• thus, the MRI detection of amygdala activation as well as the assessment of emotion regulation are likely to indicate, precisely, which pregnant women are at risk of postpartum depression.

Pregnant women are capable, like non-pregnant women, of managing their emotions. by reinterpreting a situation in a positive and voluntary way, but this “effort” seems more difficult for pregnant women. In other words, pregnant women have more difficulty achieving conscious control over these negative emotions.

“If these data were confirmed by larger studies, it would become possible, in clinical routine, to evaluate and specifically target these women during this vulnerable phase, for example, by training them in emotion regulation. A non-pharmacological approach to help these patients cope with the baby blues.