Figure 1

Maternal Hg and psychosocial stress exposure interact to influence maternal diurnal cortisol profiles during pregnancy: predicted values of Log(cortisol) over time since waking(hours) from functional mixed model with penalized splines. The full figure depicts predicted cortisol values across the entire day; panels a), b) and c) depict close-ups of predicted cortisol values in the morning (0-4 hours following waking), mid-day (4-10 hours following waking), and in the evening (10-15 hours following waking), respectively. Functional mixed models with penalized splines were used to estimate main effects of psychosocial stress and Hg exposure and interactions of the same on the mean cortisol curve for a given individual. Participants were placed into one of the four groups depicted based on whether they scored above or below the median for psychosocial stress and Hg exposure.