The project’s rationale was based on extensive evidence in humans showing significant modifications in taste perception and nutrient preference throughout pregnancy, which results in notable changes in maternal eating behaviour. It is, therefore, of extreme importance to understand how the pregnant brain alters maternal ingestive behaviour in order to generate effective preventive interventions in curtailing the development of “food addiction”, often associated to gestational diabetes and obesity in women. Moreover, I hypothesized that abnormal dietary patterns induced by pregnancy, in the prevailing western life-style, may underlie serious detrimental metabolic and neuropsychological outcomes in both mothers and offspring, increasing their vulnerability to develop eating disturbances.
NEUROPREG aimed to uncover the connectome of critical brain regions underlying eating disturbances during pregnancy and its transgenerational metabolic impact. Specifically, it (a) addressed the neuronal circuits altered during pregnancy leading to abnormal eating patterns and highly palatable food preference; and (b) investigated whether recurrent food cravings during pregnancy causes detrimental neuropsychological and metabolic regulation in the offspring.
With the results carried out during this project, we were able to show that pregnancy is associated with a functional brain connectivity reorganization affecting key components of the dopaminergic mesolimbic circuitry, mainly through accumbal dopamine receptor type 2 (D2R) neurons, that directly mediate food craving-like episodes (Haddad-Tóvolli et al., 2022; Nature Metabolism). In addition, the research shows that the neurological adjustments taking place during pregnancy provide a time-window of susceptibility to increase emotional eating that, when persistent, likely lead to intergenerational effects thus deteriorating offspring neuropsychological and metabolic health of both mother and the offspring (Haddad-Tóvolli et al., 2022; Nature Metabolism).
Ultimately, and in line with the current European research trends and societal needs, the scientific advances encountered by the research proposal contributed to generate knowledge of extremely value to target eating-disorders-related neurocircuits and generate preventing strategies for pregnant-specific differential feeding behaviours. The identified link between pregnancy and reward-inducible feeding behaviours and its metabolic and neuropsychological consequences also leading to maternal and offspring predisposition to eating disorders and obesity can be easily applicable to improve quality of life of women and the future generations, and used as guidelines for disease prevention and nutritional care.
