Social brain circuitry and social cognition in infants born preterm

Abstract

Preterm birth is associated with an increased risk of adverse neurologic, psychiatric, and cognitive outcomes. The brain circuits involved in processing social information are critical to all of these domains, but little work has been done to examine whether and how these circuits may be especially sensitive to prematurity. This paper contains a brief summary of some of the cognitive, psychiatric, and social outcomes associated with prematurity, followed by a description of findings from the modest body of research into social-cognitive development in infants and children born preterm. Next, findings from studies of structural and functional brain development in infants born preterm are reviewed, with an eye toward the distinctive role of the brain circuits implicated in social functioning. The goal of this review is to investigate the extent to which the putative “social brain” may have particular developmental susceptibilities to the insults associated with preterm birth, and the role of early social-cognitive development in later neurodevelopmental outcomes. Much work has been done to characterize neurobehavioral outcomes in the preterm population, but future research must incorporate both brain and behavioral measures to identify early biomarkers linked to later emerging social-cognitive clinical impairment in order to guide effective, targeted intervention.

Early exposure to environmental sounds and the development of cortical auditory evoked potentials of preterm infants during the first three months of life

“…Our results are corroborated by other studies that show the advantages of prematurity in auditory recognition memory [56], binocular vision [9], and language comprehension [57]. Thus, even though preterm birth is associated with many neurodevelopmental risks, especially in small for gestational age (SGA) infants [34], the early exposure to socially relevant stimuli can enhance the maturation of sensory pathways [58]. Though our results differ from studies using visual evoked potentials (VEP) that show that preterm birth negatively affects the development of visual pathways [59,60], the preterm group in those studies was composed of very preterm infants, which may have been SGA at birth.…”

The preterm social brain: altered functional networks for Theory of Mind in very preterm children

“…There is increasing evidence that VPT children experience difficulties in acquiring and appropriately utilizing their social skills ( Montagna and Nosarti, 2016 ; Fenoglio et al , 2017 ) and our results demonstrate important differences in ToM processing, which may underlie their challenges in everyday social functioning. This study is the first to examine the neural underpinnings of ToM, utilizing methodological advantages from both fMRI and MEG in VPT children.…”

Nurturing the preterm infant brain: leveraging neuroplasticity to improve neurobehavioral outcomes

“…[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] Specifically, converging findings from animal models along with human neuroimaging investigations indicate that early disruption to white and gray matter development resulting from PT birth is largely responsible for inducing disruption of cognitive development [15][16][17][18][19] and psychopathologies. [20][21][22] Brain plasticity-the way experiences shape neural wiring of the brain-is thought to be one of the primary mechanisms through which humans adapt to environmental change and demonstrate resilience to adverse events. 23 With regard to neuropsychological outcomes in the PT population, brain plasticity might be a doubleedged sword.…”