Visuo-motor coordination in 8-year-old children born pre-term before and after 28 weeks of gestation.

Purpose: This study compared the visuo-motor abilities between pre-term and full-term children.

Methods: Twenty-three 8-year-old children participated, five being born under 28 weeks gestational age (wGA) referred to as Preterms1 (mean=8 years 5 months [SD 0.3]), nine Preterms2 of 28-35 wGA (mean=7 years 9 months [SD 0.7]) and nine typically developing full-term controls (mean=8 years 6 months [SD 0.7]). All children were studied in an interhemispheric transfer time and in a visuo-manual pointing-task to test motor programming time in three conditions: unimanual pointing (dominant, non-dominant hands), mirror bimanual pointing (same direction for both hands) and opposite bimanual pointing.

Results: Significant differences were detected between Preterms 1 and 2, the latter being similar to controls. Preterms1 presented increases in interhemispheric time, suggesting an alteration in the transcallosal pathways. Programming time was significantly lengthened (p50.01) for dominant hand unilateral pointing and opposite bilateral pointing and it was the shortest for mirror pointing.

Conclusions: A faulty programming of visuo-manual tasks is suspected in Preterms1 with potential difficulty inhibiting the non-dominant limb mirror movement. This may result from an impaired interhemispheric inhibition owing to potential corpus callosum thinning. Such measures may be used to help follow-up subtle changes in fine motor control and detect pre-terms at risk of developing long-term deficits.