Background: Few studies have found long-term effects of early musical environmental enrichment in the NICU on preterm infant's development. This study examines how early music enrichment affects emotional development and effortful control abilities in 12- and 24-month-old very preterm (VPT) infants.
Methods: One hundred nineteen newborns were recruited, including 83 VPTs and 36 full-term (FT) infants.
Music is ubiquitous, both in its instrumental and vocal forms. While speech perception at birth has been at the core of an extensive corpus of research, the origins of the ability to discriminate instrumental or vocal melodies is still not well investigated. In previous studies comparing vocal and musical perception, the vocal stimuli were mainly related to speaking, including language, and not to the non-language singing voice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPreterm birth disrupts important neurodevelopmental processes occurring from mid-fetal to term-age. Musicotherapy, by enriching infants' sensory input, might enhance brain maturation during this critical period of activity-dependent plasticity. To study the impact of music on preterm infants' brain structural changes, we recruited 54 very preterm infants randomized to receive or not a daily music intervention, that have undergone a longitudinal multi-shell diffusion MRI acquisition, before the intervention (at 33 weeks' gestational age) and after it (at term-equivalent-age).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMusic is known to induce emotions and activate associated memories, including musical memories. In adults, it is well known that music activates both working memory and limbic networks. We have recently discovered that as early as during the newborn period, familiar music is processed differently from unfamiliar music.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe main aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mothers' postnatal depression, stress, and attachment during their stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Twenty mothers of very premature infants born before 32weeks of gestational age were recruited at the Geneva University Hospital between January 2018 and February 2020 before the COVID-19 pandemic started. Mothers were screened for postnatal depression after their preterm infant's birth (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, EPDS), then for stress (Parental Stressor Scale: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, PSS:NICU), and attachment (Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale, MPAS) at infant's term-equivalent age.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Purpose: Super-resolutionreconstruction (SRR) can be used to reconstruct 3-dimensional (3D) high-resolution (HR) volume from several 2-dimensional (2D) low-resolution (LR) stacks of MRI slices. The purpose is to compare lengthy 2D T2-weighted HR image acquisition of neonatal subjects with 3D SRR from several LR stacks in terms of image quality for clinical and morphometric assessments.
Methods: LR brain images were acquired from neonatal subjects to reconstruct isotropic 3D HR volumes by using SRR algorithm.
Prematurity disrupts brain development during a critical period of brain growth and organization and is known to be associated with an increased risk of neurodevelopmental impairments. Investigating whole-brain structural connectivity alterations accompanying preterm birth may provide a better comprehension of the neurobiological mechanisms related to the later neurocognitive deficits observed in this population. Using a connectome approach, we aimed to study the impact of prematurity on neonatal whole-brain structural network organization at term-equivalent age.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicroglial cells have emerged as crucial players in synaptic plasticity during development and adulthood, and also in neurodegenerative and neuroinflammatory conditions. Here we found that decreased levels of Sirtuin 2 (Sirt2) deacetylase in microglia affects hippocampal synaptic plasticity under inflammatory conditions. The results show that long-term potentiation (LTP) magnitude recorded from hippocampal slices of wild type mice does not differ between those exposed to lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a pro-inflammatory stimulus, or BSA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrematurity disrupts brain maturation by exposing the developing brain to different noxious stimuli present in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and depriving it from meaningful sensory inputs during a critical period of brain development, leading to later neurodevelopmental impairments. Musicotherapy in the NICU environment has been proposed to promote sensory stimulation, relevant for activity-dependent brain plasticity, but its impact on brain structural maturation is unknown. Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that music listening triggers neural substrates implied in socio-emotional processing and, thus, it might influence networks formed early in development and known to be affected by prematurity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is now clearly established that the environment and the sensory stimuli, particularly during the perinatal period, have an impact on infant's development. During the last trimester of gestation, activity-dependent plasticity shapes the fetal brain, and prematurity has been shown to alter the typical developmental trajectories. In this delicate period, preventive interventions aiming at modulating these developmental trajectories through activity-inducing interventions are currently underway to be tested.
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