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）：非常早产的儿童有神经发育障碍的高风险。学术成就和教育成果明显低于预期，尤其是在数学领域。即使是在婴儿/幼儿随访中被认为正常的新生新生儿课程的儿童，仍有严重数学困难的风险。此外，这些“健康的早产”儿童处于危险之中，视觉，感知，运动和执行功能缺陷，但对早产学龄前儿童中这些缺陷的出现如何与以后的数学困难有关。目前尚无数据检查选择性神经心理缺陷和早期学术困难的神经基础，但这是动态神经认知发展的关键时期，当干预可能具有减轻后来缺陷的最佳潜力时。这项纵向研究旨在评估健康早产儿的神经心理学和数学缺陷的出现，绘制早期儿童早期对脑发育的影响，并检查健康早产儿数学与神经心理学发展与发展性心理学发展与发育脑部异常之间的关系。参与者将是60名健康的早产儿（生于25-32周），平均智力和40个完整的儿童与年龄，性别，SES和言语智商相匹配。儿童将在幼儿园进入之前的6个月内进入研究。我们将使用结构性MRI和使用扩散加权成像的白质完整性指标与神经心理学和学术指标进行多模式神经影像学（整个大脑形态计量测量）。我们预测，特定的早期感知和认知缺陷将与新兴的数学缺陷有关。我们将检查以后的数学缺陷是否与早期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大的皮质表面积与潜在的纤维区域之间的联系，以及一系列涉及的神经认知和数学功能的性能水平，并获得有关这些作用如何影响神经系统中持续的生物学发展的更多信息，而神经系统中的持续生物学发展在早期发展的早期发展较小。我们还将检查其他中介因素，例如早产程度，医学和人口统计学变量。该项目的结果将大大增强我们对某些技能为什么看起来更容易受到早产的影响，这些技能与数学缺陷的早期出现如何相关的理解，以及基本的神经病理学如何解释健康早产儿的神经发育结果的广泛差异。这些结果将为确定最适合有效干预措施的赤字提供关键基础。