A potential mechanism that can explain preterm children's heightened risk for the development of later cognitive and behavioral problems is attention. Attention is the ability of an infant or child to orient to, to shift between and to maintain focus on events, objects, tasks, and problems in the external world, processes which are all dependent on the functioning of attentional networks in the...

BACKGROUND Neurodevelopmental sequelae in preterm born children are generally considered to result from cerebral white matter damage and noxious effects of environmental factors in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Cerebral white matter damage is associated with sensory processing problems in terms of registration, integration and modulation. However, research into sensory processing pro...

Preterm birth (before 37 completed weeks of gestation) is a global health problem, remaining the main reason for neonatal mortality and morbidity. Improvements in perinatal care recent decades have been associated with higher survival rate extremely preterm infants, leading to risk long-term sequelae this population throughout life. Numerous surveillance programs formerly premature infants cont...

OBJECTIVE We sought to determine if children born preterm and exposed to chorioamnionitis have differences in brain structure measured at 6-10 years of age using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). STUDY DESIGN Structural MRI was performed with 11 preterm children (8.5 ± 1.7 years) with chorioamnionitis and 16 preterm children (8.7 ± 1.4 years) without chorioamnionitis. Cortical surface reconst...

Preterm children are at higher risk for neurodevelopmental problems.1 Exclusive breastfeeding for all children, including term infants, has been recommended for the health benefits as well as overall wellbeing.2 In addition, improved developmental outcomes have been reported in term children who are exclusively breastfed.3 In preterm children, the advantages of human milk have been well establi...

Methods and Results-—We measured casual blood pressures (BPs) in a population-based cohort of 6-year-old survivors of extremely preterm birth (<27 gestational weeks; n=171) and in ageand sex-matched controls born at term (n=172). Measured BP did not differ, but sex, age-, and height-adjusted median z scores were 0.14 SD higher (P=0.02) for systolic BP and 0.10 SD higher (P=0.01) for diastolic B...

Children born preterm are at risk for deficits in language and reading. They are also at risk for injury to the white matter of the brain. The goal of this study was to determine whether performance in language and reading skills would be associated with white matter properties in children born preterm and full-term. Children born before 36 weeks gestation (n=23, mean±SD age 12.5±2.0 years, ges...

BACKGROUND Altered brain development is evident in children born very preterm (24-32 weeks gestational age), including reduction in gray and white matter volumes, and thinner cortex, from infancy to adolescence compared to term-born peers. However, many questions remain regarding the etiology. Infants born very preterm are exposed to repeated procedural pain-related stress during a period of ve...

Preterm-born children commonly experience motor, cognitive, and learning difficulties that may be accompanied by altered brain microstructure, connectivity, and neurochemistry. However, the mechanisms linking the altered neurophysiology with the behavioral outcomes are unknown. Here we provide the first physiological evidence that human adolescents born preterm at or before 37 weeks of complete...

The authors hypothesized that the risk of cerebral palsy at 2 years in children born extremely preterm to overweight and obese women is increased relative to the risk among children born to neither overweight nor obese women. In a multicenter prospective cohort study, the authors created multinomial logistic regression models of the risk of diparetic, quadriparetic, and hemiparetic cerebral pal...