Neonatal White Matter Microstructure and Emotional Development during the Preschool Years in Children Who Were Born Very Preterm

Kanel, Dana; Vanes, Lucy; Pecheva, Diliana; Hadaya, Laila; Falconer, Shona; Counsell, Serena J.; Edwards, David A.; Nosarti, Chiara

doi:10.1523/eneuro.0546-20.2021

Cited by 26 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 90 publications

(111 reference statements)

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“…In order to examine the children’s ability to recognize and interpret facial emotions, we used the Emotion Recognition Task (ERT) built on Ekman and Friesen’s (1976) “pictures of facial affect” [ 66 ], adapted and validated by [ 67 ] with stimuli of children’s faces. The stimuli consisted of static images from the validated Dartmouth database of children’s faces [ 68 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion Recognition in Preterm and Full-Term School-Age Children

Longa

Nosarti

Farroni

2022

IJERPH

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Children born preterm (<37 weeks’ gestation) show a specific vulnerability for socio-emotional difficulties, which may lead to an increased likelihood of developing behavioral and psychiatric problems in adolescence and adulthood. The accurate decoding of emotional signals from faces represents a fundamental prerequisite for early social interactions, allowing children to derive information about others’ feelings and intentions. The present study aims to explore possible differences between preterm and full-term children in the ability to detect emotional expressions, as well as possible relationships between this ability and socio-emotional skills and problem behaviors during everyday activities. We assessed 55 school-age children (n = 34 preterm and n = 21 full-term) with a cognitive battery that ensured comparable cognitive abilities between the two groups. Moreover, children were asked to identify emotional expressions from pictures of peers’ faces (Emotion Recognition Task). Finally, children’s emotional, social and behavioral outcomes were assessed with parent-reported questionnaires. The results revealed that preterm children were less accurate than full-term children in detecting positive emotional expressions and they showed poorer social and behavioral outcomes. Notably, correlational analyses showed a relationship between the ability to recognize emotional expressions and socio-emotional functioning. The present study highlights that early difficulties in decoding emotional signals from faces may be critically linked to emotional and behavioral regulation problems, with important implications for the development of social skills and effective interpersonal interactions.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Emotion Recognition in Preterm and Full-Term School-Age Children

Longa

Nosarti

Farroni

2022

IJERPH

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“…Research investigating the neonatal neural correlates of psychopathology has mainly focused on specific characteristics pertinent to the so-called preterm behavioural phenotype, encompassing anxiety, socio-emotional, and attention-related problems in early childhood (Brenner et al, 2021b). For example, socio-emotional problems have been associated with reduced regional brain volumes (Rogers et al, 2012), alterations in white matter connectivity (Brenner et al, 2021a; Kanel et al, 2021; Rogers et al, 2016) and functional connectivity (Kanel et al, 2022; Rogers et al, 2017; Sylvester et al, 2018) in the neonatal period. These effects, however, also show considerable overlap with the potential early neural mechanisms implicated in cognitive, motor, and language development, such as subcortical volume reductions (Chau et al, 2019; Loh et al, 2017), structural and functional connectivity alterations in sensory and cognitive networks (Ball et al, 2015; Gozdas et al, 2018; Peyton et al, 2020; Rogers et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal neonatal brain development and socio-demographic correlates of infant outcomes following preterm birth

Vanes

Fenn-Moltu

Hadaya

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Preterm birth results in premature exposure of the brain to the extrauterine environment during a critical period of neurodevelopment. Consequently, infants born preterm are at a heightened risk of adverse behavioural outcomes in later life. We characterise longitudinal development of neonatal regional brain volume and functional connectivity in the first weeks following preterm birth, sociodemographic factors, and their respective relationships to psychomotor outcomes and psychopathology in toddlerhood. We study 121 preterm infants preterm who underwent magnetic resonance imaging shortly after birth, at term-equivalent age, or both. Longitudinal regional brain volume and functional connectivity were modelled as a function of psychopathology and psychomotor outcomes at 18 months. Better psychomotor functioning in toddlerhood was associated with greater relative right cerebellar volume and a more rapid decrease over time of sensorimotor degree centrality in the neonatal period. In contrast, increased 18-month psychopathology was associated with a more rapid decrease in relative regional subcortical volume. Furthermore, while socio-economic deprivation was related to both psychopathology and psychomotor outcomes, cognitively stimulating parenting predicted psychopathology only. Our study highlights the importance of longitudinal imaging to better predict toddler outcomes following preterm birth, as well as disparate environmental influences on separable facets of behavioural development in this population.

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“…In VPT individuals, these difficulties hav e indeed been found to be long-lasting, with consequences observed in social, occupational and family functioning through adolescence into adulthood (Mendonça et al, 2019;Montagna and Nosarti, 2016b;Saigal et al, 2016); as well as increased risk of developing psychiatric disorders as adults, including depression, bipolar affective disorder, anxiety disorder and schizophrenia (Nosarti et al, 2012;Räikkönen et al, 2008;Walshe et al, 2008). In line with these studies, alteration in structural brain architecture has been associated with atypical socio-emotional development in VPT children (Fischi-Gomez et al, 2015;Kanel et al, 2021). Consequently, understanding brain functional underpinning of socio-emotional abilities in young VPT children might therefore inform on potential biomarker of socio-emotional difficulties and vulnerability of future psychiatric disorders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Large scale brain network dynamics in very preterm children and relationship with socio-emotional outcomes

Siffredi

Liverani

Freitas

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Children born very preterm (VPT; < 32 completed weeks of gestation) are at high risk of neurodevelopmental and neurobehavioral difficulties associated with atypical brain maturation. The analysis of large-scale brain network dynamics during rest allows to investigate brain functional connectivity and their association with behavioural outcomes. Of interest, prematurity has been associated with atypical socio-emotional development with significant implications for the forming of peer relationships, adaptive functioning, academic achievement and mental health. In this study, we extracted dynamic functional connectivity by using the innovation-driven co-activation patterns (iCAPs) framework in preterm and full-term children aged 6 to 9 to explore changes in spatial organisation, laterality and temporal dynamics of spontaneous large-scale brain activity. Multivariate pattern analysis was used to explore potential biomarkers for socio-emotional difficulties in preterm children. Results show a spatial organisation of 13 networks retrieved comparable to full-term controls. Dynamic features and lateralisation of network brain activity were also comparable across groups for all large-scale brain networks. Despite apparent similarities in terms of dynamical functional connectivity parameters, multivariate pattern analysis unveiled group differences in their associations with socio-emotional abilities. While a pattern of decreased engagement in certain brain networks were associated with better socio-emotional abilities in full-term controls; in the VPT group, better socio-emotional abilities were associated with coordination of activity across different networks, i.e., coupling duration between different pairs of networks. It is possible that group differences reflect reduced degree of maturation of functional architecture in the VPT group for socio-emotional abilities.

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Neonatal White Matter Microstructure and Emotional Development during the Preschool Years in Children Who Were Born Very Preterm

Cited by 26 publications

References 90 publications

Emotion Recognition in Preterm and Full-Term School-Age Children

Emotion Recognition in Preterm and Full-Term School-Age Children

Longitudinal neonatal brain development and socio-demographic correlates of infant outcomes following preterm birth

Large scale brain network dynamics in very preterm children and relationship with socio-emotional outcomes

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