Stress during pregnancy such as gut changes or a trigger of the immune system can impact the brain health of the foetus, potentially paving way for neurodevelopmental abnormalities to develop, according to a new genetic study in mice.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers have mapped how stress events during pregnancy can affect the neuroimmune landscape of the developing foetal brain using spatial transcriptomics -- they help reveal which genes of a tissue were active and where.