Fine motor skills have long been recognized as an important foundation for development in other domains. However, more precise insights into the role of fine motor skills, and their relationships to other skills in mediating early educational achievements, are needed to support the development of optimal educational interventions. We explored concurrent relationships between two components of fine motor skills, Fine Motor Precision and Fine Motor Integration, and early reading and maths development in two studies with primary school children of low-to-mid socio-economic status in the UK. Two key findings were revealed. First, despite being in the first 2 years of primary school education, significantly better performance was found in reading compared to maths across both studies. This may reflect the protective effects of recent national-level interventions to promote early literacy skills in young children in the UK that have not been similarly promoted for maths. Second, fine motor skills were a better predictor of early maths ability than they were of early reading ability. Hierarchical multiple regression revealed that fine motor skills did not significantly predict reading ability when verbal short-term memory was taken into account. In contrast, Fine Motor Integration remained a significant predictor of maths ability, even after the influence of non-verbal IQ had been accounted for. These results suggest that fine motor skills should have a pivotal role in educational interventions designed to support the development of early mathematical skills.

BackgroundVery preterm birth (VPT; <32 weeks of gestation) has been associated with impairments in emotion regulation, social competence and communicative skills. However, the neuroanatomical mechanisms underlying such impairments have not been systematically studied. Here we investigated the functional integrity of the amygdala connectivity network in relation to the ability to recognize emotions from facial expressions in VPT adults.MethodThirty-six VPT-born adults and 38 age-matched controls were scanned at rest in a 3-T MRI scanner. Resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) was assessed with SPM8. A seed-based analysis focusing on three amygdalar subregions (centro-medial/latero-basal/superficial) was performed. Participants’ ability to recognize emotions was assessed using dynamic stimuli of human faces expressing six emotions at different intensities with the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT).ResultsVPT individuals compared to controls showed reduced rs-fc between the superficial subregion of the left amygdala, and the right posterior cingulate cortex (p = 0.017) and the left precuneus (p = 0.002). The VPT group further showed elevated rs-fc between the left superficial amygdala and the superior temporal sulcus (p = 0.008). Performance on the ERT showed that the VPT group was less able than controls to recognize anger at low levels of intensity. Anger scores were significantly associated with rs-fc between the superficial amygdala and the posterior cingulate cortex in controls but not in VPT individuals.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that alterations in rs-fc between the amygdala, parietal and temporal cortices could represent the mechanism linking VPT birth and deficits in emotion processing.

Background The last trimester of pregnancy is a critical period for the establishment of cortical gyrification and altered folding patterns have been reported following very preterm birth (< 33 weeks of gestation) in childhood and adolescence. However, research is scant on the persistence of such alterations in adulthood and their associations with cognitive and psychiatric outcomes.Methods We studied 79 very-preterm adults and 81 age-matched full-term controls. T1-weighted images were used to measure local gyrification index (LGI), indicating the degree of folding across multiple vertices of the reconstructed cortical surface. Group and group-sex LGI differences were assessed using per-vertex adjustment for cortical thickness and overall intracranial volume. Withingroup correlations were also computed between LGI and functional outcomes, including general intelligence (IQ) and psychopathology.Results Very preterm adults had significantly reduced LGI in extensive cortical regions encompassing the frontal, anterior temporal and occipito-parietal lobes. Alterations in lateral frontotemporal-parietal and medial occipito-parietal regions were present in both males and females, although males reported more extensive alterations. In both very preterm adults and controls, higherLGI was associated with higher IQ and lower psychopathology scores, with the spatial distribution of these associations substantially differing between the two groups.Conclusions Very preterm adults' brains are characterized by significant and widespread local hypogyria and these abnormalities might be implicated in cognitive and psychiatric outcomes.Gyrification reflects an early developmental process and provides a fingerprint for very preterm birth.

Optic Pathway Glioma (OPG) is a relatively common brain tumour in childhood; however, there is scarce understanding of neuropsychological sequelae in these survivors. In this study, 12 children with diagnosis of OPG before 6 years of age received a comprehensive standardised assessment of visual perception, general intelligence and academic achievement, using adjustments to visual materials of the tests, to examine the extent of concurrent impairment in these functional domains. Information about vision, clinical and socio-demographic factors were extracted from medical records to assess the associations of neuropsychological outcomes with clinical and socio-demographic factors. Children with OPG exhibited high within-patient variability and moderate group-level impairment compared to test norms. Visual perception was the most impaired domain, while scholastic progression was ageappropriate overall. For cognition, core verbal and visuo-spatial reasoning skills were intact, whereas deficits were found in working memory and processing speed. Visual function was associated with tasks that rely on visual input. Children with OPG are at moderate risk of neuropsychological impairment, especially for visual perception and cognitive proficiency. Future research should elucidate further the relative contribution of vision loss and neurofibromatosis type 1 co-diagnosis within a large sample. Optic Pathway Gliomas (OPGs) represent about 5% of all intracranial neoplasms in childhood 1,2. They are a relatively homogeneous group of benign lesions that arise in any structure along the visual pathway and histologically classify as pilocytic astrocytoma. Half or more OPGs are associated with Neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) 3,4 , a multisystem genetic disorder that is associated with neuropsychological sequelae, including mild intellectual impairment, inattention, visuospatial deficits and learning disability 5-9. While survival rates of OPG exceed 90% 10 , most children experience some degree of visual impairment that significantly affects their quality of life 11,12. Both NF1 comorbidity and visual impairment place children with OPG at risk of neuropsychological difficulties, but research has rarely focused on functional outcomes beyond vision. Retrospective investigations of OPG survivorship at two large north American institutions showed that only 26% to 42% of the whole patients cohort received sufficient psychological evaluation, and they reported only broad measures of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) 13 , in a descriptive manner 10. One prospective study 14 documented the neuropsychological profile of 21 school-aged children with OPG initially treated with chemotherapy integrating an IQ test for cognitive function with a collection of subtests from different batteries for individual perceptual and scholastic skills. This study was limited by the fact that over a third of the children had been treated with additional radiotherapy, the most critical risk factor for neurocognitive decline 15,16. In addition, this does not reflect th...