Boldin Alex M, Geiger Romin, Emberson Lauren L
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
Department of Psychology, Tennessee State University, Nashville, Tennessee.
Dev Psychobiol. 2018 Jul;60(5):544-556. doi: 10.1002/dev.21624. Epub 2018 Apr 24.
Prematurity alters developmental trajectories in preterm infants even in the absence of medical complications. Here, we use fNIRS and learning tasks to probe the nature of the developmental differences between preterm and full-term born infants. Our recent work has found that prematurity disrupts the ability to engage in top-down sensory prediction after learning. We now examine the neural changes during the learning that precede prediction. In full-terms, we found modulation of all cortical regions examined during learning (temporal, frontal, and occipital). By contrast, preterm infants had no evidence of neural changes in the occipital lobe selectively. This is striking as the learning task leads to the emergence of visual prediction. Moreover, the shape of individual infants' occipital lobe trajectories (regardless of prematurity) predicts subsequent visual prediction abilities. These results suggest that modulation of sensory cortices during learning is closely related to the emergence of top-down signals and further indicates that developmental differences in premature infants may be associated with deficits in top-down processing.
即使没有医学并发症，早产也会改变早产儿的发育轨迹。在这里，我们使用功能性近红外光谱技术（fNIRS）和学习任务来探究早产和足月出生婴儿发育差异的本质。我们最近的研究发现，早产会破坏学习后进行自上而下的感觉预测的能力。我们现在研究在预测之前的学习过程中的神经变化。在足月出生的婴儿中，我们发现学习过程中所有被检查的皮质区域（颞叶、额叶和枕叶）都有调节。相比之下，早产儿没有证据表明枕叶有选择性的神经变化。这很引人注目，因为学习任务会导致视觉预测的出现。此外，个体婴儿枕叶轨迹的形状（无论是否早产）可预测随后的视觉预测能力。这些结果表明，学习过程中感觉皮层的调节与自上而下信号的出现密切相关，进一步表明早产儿的发育差异可能与自上而下处理的缺陷有关。
