Parental support improves brain development in premature babies

Parental support improves brain development in premature babies

Supporting the emotional connection between a premature baby and his mother during intensive care treatment effectively improves the baby's brain development. The effects are clearly visible in the network function of the baby's brain and in later neurocognitive development.

A joint study by the University of Helsinki and Columbia University showed that supporting the emotional connection between a mother and her premature baby after birth in the hospital's intensive care unit improved the baby's brain development.

Columbia University professors Martha G. Welch and Michael M. Myers previously found that supporting the emotional connection between mother and child during the neonatal intensive care unit significantly improved later neurobehavioral development.

The current study measured the brain network functions of preterm infants at term age, after approximately six weeks of Family Nurture Intervention (FNI) in the neonatal intensive care unit. All babies received normal, high standard preterm care, but some families received additional FNI to strengthen the emotional mother-infant bond.

The study shows that such parental support during intensive care treatment eliminated the developmental brain function defects typically observed in premature infants. The brain network function of the premature babies in the treatment group did not differ from that of their control counterparts who were born at normal ages.

"Treatment of premature babies in the intensive care unit has improved tremendously, but supporting brain development is still a global challenge. In addition to treatment innovations, better methods are needed to measure how the new treatments directly affect the developing child's brain," says Professor Sampsa Vanhatalo, who led the research.

New research methods facilitate care innovations by measuring the direct effects of novel treatments on the brain

"The new analysis methods for infant brain function showed that FNI affected the development of the baby's brain networks so that at term they were very close to those of a full-term control group. And most importantly, we found that these changes were also linked to better neurocognitive function." Development after 18 months,” says doctoral student Pauliina Yrjölä, who carried out the computational analyses.

"Current research also shows the importance of combining long-term technical research and development with innovative development of clinical treatments. In Helsinki, groundbreaking neuroscientific work has been carried out for two decades to improve the assessment of brain function in infants, while in New York, extraordinarily interesting non-pharmacological research has been carried out on the treatment of premature babies. The results open many doors Perspectives in both neuroscientific research and clinical treatment,” says Dr. Anton Tokariev, who was responsible for the treatment technical development.

In recent years, several studies have presented different approaches to “enrich” the infant's environment in the neonatal intensive care unit through specific sensory stimuli such as music, massage or skin-to-skin contact. A new study now highlights the importance of natural, live interaction between parents and children. Research shows that supporting the emotional connection between mother and child leads to direct improvements in brain activity networks, the foundation of lifelong neurocognitive performance.

From a global perspective, the new findings are particularly interesting because such treatment advances make the intervention accessible to everyone, regardless of the resources of the health system or the individual patient.”

Professor Sampsa Vanhatalo

Source:

University of Helsinki

Reference:

Yrjölä, P., et al. (2022) Promoting early parent-child emotional connection improves cortical networks in preterm infants. Scientific translational medicine. doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abq4786.