Summary: Study may provide clues as to why seemingly healthy babies born prematurely often face higher risks of developmental delays.
Source: Princeton.
Babies born prematurely don’t use their expectations about the world to shape their brains as babies born at full term do, important evidence that this neural process is important to development.
The findings offer clues to the mystery of why otherwise healthy babies born prematurely face higher risk of developmental delays as they grow, according to researchers at Princeton University, the University of Rochester Medical Center and the University of Rochester.
In 6-month-old babies born at-term, the portions of the brain responsible for visual processing respond not just to what the baby sees but also to what the baby expects to see. That’s a sign babies are learning from their experiences, said Lauren Emberson, an assistant professor of psychology at Princeton. But babies born prematurely don’t demonstrate that type of brain response to expectations, known as top-down processing.
“This helps bring together the picture that this type of processing is important for neural development,” Emberson said. “This also gives us insights into what might be going wrong in the case of prematurity. We believe this inability for learning to shape the brain is possibly one of the reasons.”
The research is described in an article, “Deficits in Top-Down, Sensory Prediction in Infants At-Risk Due to Premature Birth,” published online Jan. 26 in the journal Current Biology. The other authors are Alex Boldin, a research specialist at Princeton, Julie Riccio and Ronnie Guillet of the University of Rochester Medical Center, and Richard Aslin of the University of Rochester.
Emberson will discuss this research and projects underway now at the Princeton Baby Lab during a Facebook Live chat at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 31, on Princeton’s Facebook page.
The researchers tested 100 babies, split between those born at full term and those born prematurely. The babies were tested at 6 months of age, based on their conception.
The babies were exposed to a pattern that included a sound — like a honk from a clown horn or a rattle — followed by an image of a red cartoon smiley face. The researchers used functional near-infrared spectroscopy, a technology that measures oxygenation in regions of the brain using light, to assess the babies’ brain activity.
After exposing the infants to the sound-and-image pattern, the researchers began omitting the image sometimes. In the full-term infants, brain activity was detected in the visual areas of the brain even when the image didn’t appear as expected, a sign of this top-down sensory prediction. The brains of premature babies didn’t show this activity.
Emberson said this research sets the stage for continued work to understand how top-down processing helps babies learn better and how the lack of top-down processing relates to later developmental delays in the babies born prematurely. For example, the first sign of a developmental delay for a child might come when they aren’t using any words at age 2.
“Developmental sciences knows these missed milestones don’t happen in the moment. They’re happening in the months and years leading up to that,” Emberson said. “By looking much earlier and being able to show that are these differences in how learning is shaping the brain, maybe we can know much sooner which babies are likely to have problems.”
Charles Nelson, professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School and professor of education at Harvard University, said the research highlights the importance of examining such potential links between early brain development and later learning difficulties.
“This work has important implications for the thousands of infants born early but healthy, a group that does not typically receive a great deal of attention,” Nelson said.
Funding: The research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Source: Michael Hotchkiss – Princeton
Image Source: NeuroscienceNews.com image is credited to Lauren Emberson.
Original Research: Abstract for “Deficits in Top-Down, Sensory Prediction in Infants At-Risk Due to Premature Birth” by Lauren L. Emberson, Alex M. Boldin, Julie E. Riccio, Ronnie Guillet, and Richard N. Aslin in Current Biology. Published online January 26 2017 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.028
[cbtabs][cbtab title=”MLA”]Princeton “Premature Babies Don’t Use Sensory Prediction Brain Process That May Be Key to Development.” NeuroscienceNews. NeuroscienceNews, 27 January 2017.
<https://neurosciencenews.com/sensory-prediction-neurodevelopment-6016/>.[/cbtab][cbtab title=”APA”]Princeton (2017, January 27). Premature Babies Don’t Use Sensory Prediction Brain Process That May Be Key to Development. NeuroscienceNew. Retrieved January 27, 2017 from https://neurosciencenews.com/sensory-prediction-neurodevelopment-6016/[/cbtab][cbtab title=”Chicago”]Princeton “Premature Babies Don’t Use Sensory Prediction Brain Process That May Be Key to Development.” https://neurosciencenews.com/sensory-prediction-neurodevelopment-6016/ (accessed January 27, 2017).[/cbtab][/cbtabs]
Abstract
Deficits in Top-Down, Sensory Prediction in Infants At-Risk Due to Premature Birth
Highlights
•Prediction has been proposed to be essential for human development
•Infants at risk due to premature birth exhibit deficits in prediction
•Neural deficits were specific to prediction, and not to simple learning or perception
•Deficits were found early in development, suggesting a causal role for prediction
Summary
A prominent theoretical view is that the brain is inherently predictive and that prediction helps drive the engine of development. Although infants exhibit neural signatures of top-down sensory prediction, in order to establish that prediction supports development, it must be established that deficits in early prediction abilities alter trajectories. We investigated prediction in infants born prematurely, a leading cause of neuro-cognitive impairment worldwide. Prematurity, independent of medical complications, leads to developmental disturbances and a broad range of developmental delays. Is an alteration in early prediction abilities the common cause? Using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), we measured top-down sensory prediction in preterm infants (born <33 weeks gestation) before infants exhibited clinically identifiable developmental delays (6 months corrected age). Whereas preterm infants had typical neural responses to presented visual stimuli, they exhibited altered neural responses to predicted visual stimuli. Importantly, a separate behavioral control confirmed that preterm infants detect pattern violations at the same rate as full-terms, establishing selectivity of this response to top-down predictions (e.g., not in learning an audiovisual association). These findings suggest that top-down sensory prediction plays a crucial role in development and that deficits in this ability may be the reason why preterm infants experience altered developmental trajectories and are at risk for poor developmental outcomes. Moreover, this work presents an opportunity for establishing a neuro-biomarker for early identification of infants at risk and could guide early intervention regimens.
“Deficits in Top-Down, Sensory Prediction in Infants At-Risk Due to Premature Birth” by Lauren L. Emberson, Alex M. Boldin, Julie E. Riccio, Ronnie Guillet, and Richard N. Aslin in Current Biology. Published online January 26 2017 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.028
