A team of researchers from Kings College London (United Kingdom) has carried out a study that tried to shed light on the incidence of premature births in babies. The work has concluded that being born before 33 weeks of gestation increases the risk of suffering neurological diseases , including autism and attention deficit disorders. The study has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
Experts have discovered, after analyzing functional magnetic resonance images of both 19 babies born between 37 and 42 weeks of gestation and those born prematurely (before 33 weeks and representing 47 babies in the study), that premature babies suffer a impaired connectivity in two very important areas of the brain: the cerebral cortex and the thalamus (the region through which almost all stimuli that reach the cerebral cortex pass).
In addition, the more premature the babies were, the more connectivity they had between the thalamus and the area of the primary sensory cortex involved in processing signals from the face, jaw, or lips. Thus, the center of cognitive functions appears weakened and the connections related to food, strengthened .
The other babies, those born at term, however, had a brain structure very similar to that of adults in these two specific regions, showing that indeed the brain connections are quite mature at birth.
This identification of deficiencies in the connectivity between the thalamus and the cerebral cortex in infants represents the first phase of the investigation. The next step will be to understand how these outcomes are associated with the learning, concentration, and social environment difficulties that many of these children experience as they grow and develop.
