According to a new study premature birth of a child can have an effect on the infant’s brain activity, which takes place when the baby sleeps. It has been observed that this also has an effect on the brain of the child in the future. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications. It analysed brain activity data collected from 94 infants from Helsinki, Finland. The group included 42 infants who were born very prematurely at 27 weeks and also control groups that consisted of 52 infants who were born when they were grown fully.
"Quality of sleep is a vital indicator of brain health, particularly in newborn infants, and our study looked at the brain process supporting distinct sleep patterns in preterm and full-term babies when measured about two weeks after the full term due date," said Dr Luca Cocchi, senior author and head of QIMR Berghofer's Clinical Brain Networks team.
“We found babies born at full term had marked reorganisation of brain activity during different stages of sleep, while it wasn't as distinct in very premature babies," Dr. Cocchi added. Dr. Cocchi further said, "Our study also indicated that the differences in neural sleep activity at 42 weeks could predict a child's ability to use visual information to solve problems at two years of age. There was some indication it might also have a small effect on social-emotional abilities - but that would require further research."
The author of the study went on to explain that sleep much like other behaviors. Good sleep helps with the proper organization dymanic patterns of brain activity during different sleep states. For the purpose of the study, the research team used high-density electroencephalography (EEG) and other tools to map interactions between different brain regions when babies were in active sleep and quiet sleep.
"These two stages are key components of a newborn's sleep-wake cycle, and gradually transform with age into cycles of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep states such as deep sleep," said Dr James Roberts, a co-author of the study and head of QIMR Berghofer's Brain Modelling Group.
He added, "The project was unique because it used advanced modeling methods to address a scientific problem that had potential implications for lifelong brain health." "These tools have been previously used to describe complex systems such as the acoustics of musical instruments, but we've been able to adapt it to brain waves in sleeping babies."
Neuroscientists, physicists, neonatal clinical neurophysiologists, psychiatrists and biomedical engineers from several hospital and research facilities across the world collaborated for the study.
