Arousal/visual preference interactions in high-risk neonates.

Abstract

We investigated the organization of arousal and attention processes in 138 neurologically at-risk neonates by studying visual preferences when the infants were in 3 arousal conditions: less aroused (after feeding while swaddled), more aroused-internal (before feeding while unswaddled), and more aroused-external (after feeding while swaddled with 8-Hz visual stimulation before each trial). The stimuli were unpatterned light panels illuminated at temporal frequencies of 1,2,4, and 8 Hz. Four brain insult groups were defined by cranial ultrasonography and brainstem auditory evoked response tests. There were no differences in looking preferences in the 2 more aroused conditions. A previously reported interaction between arousal level and stimulus frequency was replicated, with infants preferring faster frequencies when arousal was decreased. Brain insult reduced this interaction by shifting preference functions when less aroused toward less stimulation.Infants cannot gain information, learn about the world, or interact socially unless they first actively attend to relevant features of their environment. Typically, term infants are born with most of their physiological systems coordinated and well adapted to the immediate environment they are likely to face. This structural and functional organization is evident in the fundamental processes of state modulation and attention to stimulation that are necessary antecedent conditions to learning and memory.For neonates, it appears that arousal and attention work interdependently as a quantitatively organized homeostatic system that combines the effects of internal and external factors to specify attention to particular stimuli. Thus, systematic directional shifts in attention occur when either external or internal factors vary. For example, when infants are more aroused (and have higher levels of internal activity), they orient toward less intense stimuli, and when infants are less aroused (and have lower levels of internal activity), they orient toward more intense stimuli (

The Development of Visual Attention in Infancy

“…Structures in the ascending noradrenergic pathway are involved in the processing of vestibular input (Nishiike et al 1997, Pompeiano et al 1991, Schuerger & Balaban 1999, and so it seems possible that stimulation involved in common caregiving activities (picking up or rocking the infant) may produce changes in norepinephrine in any number of higher-order brain areas. Furthermore, it is also the case that newborns' and 1-month-old infants' visual responses to stimuli of different levels of complexity, motion, or novelty are strongly affected by manipulations of arousal, such as feeding or swaddling (Gardner & Karmel 1981, 1984Gardner et al 1992;Gardner & Turkewitz 1982;Geva et al 1999), or by prior stimulation in modalities other than vision (Gardner et al 1986). This is not the case with older infants, however.…”

Impairments to visual disengagement in autism spectrum disorder: A review of experimental studies from infancy to adulthood

“…Abnormal visual disengagement in very young infants might interfere with social-communication, emotion regulation, and joint attention in HR infants Schietecatte et al, 2012;Bryson et al, 2014). For example, if an infant has trouble disengaging from a distressing stimulus to look towards a distracting event, the infant may become hyper-aroused and, overtime, develop atypical arousal regulation (Gardner et al, 1992).…”

“…ASD is one of the most prevalent forms of developmental disability internationally, with current estimates at 1 in 68 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014). Impairments to attention have often been considered to be associated or comorbid with the disorder (Keehn et al, 2013), although recent research has suggested that attentional abnormalities play more of a primary role in ASD, underlying several core features, including the impairments in emotional regulation Gardner et al, 1992;Anderson and Colombo, 2009;Garon et al, 2009), and in joint attention (Schietecatte et al, 2012;Morales et al, 2000;Mundy et al, 2007), as well as the inflexibility in behaviour (Hutt et al, 1964;Landry and Bryson, 2004;Lovaas et al, 1979;Casey et al, 1993;Townsend et al, 1996Townsend et al, , 2001Senju et al, 2004). Not surprisingly, impairments to the alerting network, the orienting network, and the executive control networks have been reported in ASD (for an overview of atypical attention in ASD using the three network model, see Keehn et al, 2013).…”

Neonatal visual information processing in cocaine-exposed and non-exposed infants

“…In the perinatal period, other investigators have found cocaine-exposed neonates to demonstrate poorer habituation (which includes reaction to the repeated presentation of a visual stimulus) on the NBAS (Eisen et al, 1991;Mayes et al, 1993), poorer orientation (Mirochnick et al, 1997;Delaney-Black et al, 1996), and to demonstrate deficits in arousal-modulated attention similar to those noted in neonates with central nervous system compromise (Gardner, Karmel, & Magnano, 1992). Similarly, abnormalities in the left hemisphere visual attention system have been implicated in a study which found that cocaine-exposed infants are slower to orient to stimuli in the right visual field (Heffelfinger, Craft, & Skyken, 1997).…”