The role of early visual perception for neurodevelopment in very preterm infants

The purpose of this project is to delineate early risk factors and identify biomarkers for neurodevelopmental impairments (NDI) in very preterm infants, affecting around 20-30% of survivors.

We hypothesize that a combined research approach, with detailed collection of perinatal and neonatal data, biomarkers, epigenetics, EEG, NIRS, and MRI, together with repeated assessment of neurodevelopment and oculomotor functions, will contribute to increase the understanding of mechanisms associated with NDI in these infants.This observational study takes place at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Uppsala.

During a 2-year period we aim at recruiting around 100 very preterm (gestational age 22-31 weeks) infants and 60 full-term control infants.

In this project we will follow the children until two years of age, but aim for a longer follow up in the future.Unique for this study is the repeated tests of oculomotor function and visual perception from 2 to 24 months’s (corrected for prematurity). The non-invasive tests measure eye-tracking when infants look at short test paradigms on a computer screen.

The study design builds on results in a previous project in Uppsala, LOVIS (LOngitudinal study of VISuomotor capacity in very preterm infants), with a recent 12-year follow-up.

We have shown close correlations between eye-tracking results at 4 months’ and later neurodevelopment, and a long-term aim is to investigate if the method also can be used for training of high-risk infants.