Neural Basis of Emergent Math Difficulties in Healthy Preterm Children

健康早产儿出现数学困难的神经基础

• 批准号: 8595784
• 负责人: NATACHA AKSHOOMOFF
• 金额: $ 64.22万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-07-20 至 2018-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8595784
• 关键词: Academic achievement; Accounting; Adolescent; Affect; Age; Area; Attention; Benign; Biological; Brain; Brain Injuries; Cell Nucleus; Child; Cognitive; Cognitive deficits; Data; Development; Diffusion weighted imaging; Fiber; Foundations; Infant; Intelligence; Intervention; Language; Link; Longitudinal Studies; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Maps; Mathematics; Measures; Mediating; Medical; Motor; Neonatal; Neurocognitive; Neurodevelopmental Impairment; Nursery Schools; Outcome; Participant; Pathway interactions; Performance; Periventricular white matter injury; Premature Birth; Premature Infant; Process; Reading; Relative (related person); Research Design; Research Project Grants; Risk; School-Age Population; Schools; Surface; System; Testing; Time; Toddler; Variant; Visual; Visual attention; Visual impairment; base; brain behavior; brain volume; critical developmental period; critical period; design; early childhood; effective intervention; executive function; follow-up; gray matter; high risk; indexing; kindergarten; neurodevelopment; neuroimaging; neuropathology; neuropsychological; performance tests; premature; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; sex; skills; white matter

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Very preterm children are at high risk for neurodevelopmental impairments. Academic achievement and educational outcomes are significantly lower than expected, particularly in the area of mathematics. Even children with relatively benign neonatal courses who are deemed normal at infant/toddler follow-up remain at risk for significant math difficulties. In addition, these "healthy preterm" children are at risk fr significant attention, visual, perceptual, motor, and executive function deficits, but little is knwn about how the emergence of these deficits in preterm preschoolers may be related to later math difficulties. There are currently no data examining the neural basis of selective neuropsychological deficits and early academic difficulties, yet this is a critical period of dynamc neurocognitive development when intervention may have the best potential for mitigating later deficits. This longitudinal study aims to evaluate the emergence of neuropsychological and math deficits in healthy preterm children, map the impact of preterm birth on brain development during early childhood, and examine the relationship between math and neuropsychological development and developmental brain abnormalities in healthy preterm children. Participants will be 60 healthy preterm children (born 25-32 gestational weeks) with average intelligence and 40 full term children matched for age, sex, SES, and verbal IQ. Children will enter the study within 6 months prior to kindergarten entry. We will integrate multimodal neuroimaging (whole brain morphometric measures using structural MRI and indices of white matter integrity using diffusion weighted imaging) with neuropsychological and academic measures across three annual time points. We predict that specific early perceptual and cognitive deficits will be relate to emerging math deficits. We will examine whether later math deficits are related to early non-symbolic and symbolic processing deficits. Our longitudinal study design aims to elucidate the links between the most affected cortical surface areas and underlying fiber tracts and level of performance on a set of implicated neurocognitive and math functions, and to acquire more information about how these effects impact ongoing biological development in neural systems less directly affected early in development. We will also examine other mediating factors, such as degree of prematurity and medical and demographic variables. The results from this project will greatly enhance our understanding of why certain skills appear more vulnerable to preterm birth, how these skills are related to the early emergence of math deficits, and how the underlying neuropathology accounts for extensive variations in neurodevelopmental outcome in healthy preterm children. These results will provide the critical foundation for identifying the deficits most amenable to effective interventions.

描述（由申请人提供）：极早产儿出现神经发育障碍的风险很高。学业成绩和教育成果明显低于预期，特别是在数学领域。即使新生儿课程相对良好、在婴幼儿随访中被视为正常的儿童，也仍然面临严重数学困难的风险。此外，这些“健康的早产”儿童面临着注意力、视觉、知觉、运动和执行功能显着缺陷的风险，但人们对早产学龄前儿童出现的这些缺陷与后来的数学困难之间的关系知之甚少。目前还没有数据检查选择性神经心理缺陷和早期学业困难的神经基础，但这是动态神经认知发展的关键时期，此时干预可能最有可能减轻以后的缺陷。这项纵向研究旨在评估健康早产儿神经心理和数学缺陷的出现情况，绘制早产对儿童早期大脑发育的影响，并检查健康早产儿数学和神经心理发育与发育性大脑异常之间的关系。参与者将是 60 名具有平均智力的健康早产儿（出生于 25-32 孕周）和 40 名年龄、性别、SES 和语言智商相匹配的足月儿童。儿童将在入园前 6 个月内进入研究。我们将在三个年度时间点将多模式神经影像学（使用结构 MRI 的全脑形态测量和使用扩散加权成像的白质完整性指数）与神经心理学和学术测量相结合。我们预测，特定的早期知觉和认知缺陷将与新出现的数学缺陷有关。我们将研究后来的数学缺陷是否与早期的非符号和符号处理缺陷有关。我们的纵向研究设计旨在阐明受影响最严重的皮质表面区域和底层纤维束之间的联系以及一组相关神经认知和数学功能的表现水平，并获取更多关于这些影响如何影响早期发育中直接影响较小的神经系统中正在进行的生物发育的信息。我们还将研究其他中介因素，例如早产程度以及医疗和人口变量。该项目的结果将极大地加深我们对为什么某些技能似乎更容易早产、这些技能与数学缺陷的早期出现有何关系，以及潜在的神经病理学如何解释健康早产儿神经发育结果的广泛变化的理解。这些结果将为确定最适合有效干预的赤字提供重要基础。