Higher tactile sensitivity in preterm infants at term-equivalent age: A pilot study

Abstract

Despite a growing body of research on perinatal sensory abilities, data on the extent of tactile sensitivity and more particularly passive touch (i.e. sensitivity to a stimulation imposed on the skin) are relatively limited, and the development and processing of tactile function are still thus little known. This question is particularly of high importance for infants with atypical early development such as those born prematurely who are exposed to many sensory (including tactile) stimulations (being in a hospital setting) during a critical period of brain development and those born at early term whose birth occurs at the precise time of cortical reorganization, in particular in the sensory areas. Some parents and health-care providers have for instance reported that children born prematurely exhibit atypical (e.g. higher) sensitivity to "benign" tactile stimuli. In the present study, we hypothesized that preterm and earlyterm infants may show altered tactile sensitivity. We compared the behavioral responses around term-equivalent age of infants born either pre-term, early-term or at term to the application of a light (0.008 grams) mechanical stimulus. We found that almost all preterm infants perceive this tactile stimulus, contrarily to the two other groups of infants. This extreme tactile sensitivity may be due to experiential, maturational or more likely both processes. We also compared the tactile sensitivity of these infants to that of adults. We found that adults were irresponsive to the light mechanical stimulus. This finding opens not only new insights in understanding development of tactile processing, but also new lines of thought about the particular sensory world of premature and early-term infants and hence about the potential impact of early care practices.

Post-Intensive Care Syndrome in Newborns from a Nutritional and Neuromotor Perspective

“…Environments that will harm this child's biopsychosocial may interfere with expected development [14,42]. Interestingly, the present study presents the same trend identified in the literature, which demonstrates that preterm newborns had altered motor performance in a greater proportion compared to full-term newborns [43][44][45].…”

Testing individual variations of horses’ tactile reactivity: when, where, how?

“…The question of the effects of experience, and the possible habituation or sensitization effect of repeated tactile stimulations is also important. Thus, pre-term infants tested at term-age showed a greater tactile sensitivity compared to full-term neonates (André et al 2020). One hypothesis is that these preterm infants had been exposed to repeated tactile stimulations at that time (e.g.…”

Early structural connectivity within the sensorimotor network: Deviations related to prematurity and association to neurodevelopmental outcome

“…This was based on the assumption that early peripheral stimuli are essential for the emerging SM network maturation, and that preterm birth is associated with modified SM stimuli and experiences, notably related to numerous and various procedures in NICU (Mörelius et al, 2006;Gibbins et al, 2008), which might have a differential effect on somatosensory and motor systems (Duerden et al, 2018;Schneider et al, 2018;Jones et al, 2022). Of direct relevance, previous studies have reported either higher tactile sensitivity in PT infants at TEA (André et al, 2020), tactile hyporeactivity, lower brain responses (Maitre et al, 2017) and/or undifferentiated integration of nociceptive versus nonnociceptive stimuli (Fabrizi et al, 2011), in association with WM abnormalities (Brummelte et al, 2012;Zwicker et al, 2013).…”