Explaining bursts of activity in brains of preterm babies

The source of spontaneous, high-amplitude bursts of activity seen in the brains of preterm babies, which are vital for healthy development, has been identified by a team led by researchers at UCL and King's College London. In a new study published in eLife and funded by the National Institute for Health Research and the Medical Research Council, the researchers found that a specific brain region called the insula plays a major role in the generation of the spontaneous neuronal bursts. The researchers say the spontaneous brain activity is essential to strengthen brain connections which will serve as 'scaffolding' that will then develop further with life experience. Other studies have found that infants whose brains don't display this activity are more likely to develop cerebral palsy or have poor cognitive skills later in life. "While we don't yet know what causes these neuronal bursts, we know that in healthy babies, they are present preterm and disappear at full term. It's a bad sign if they are absent in preterm or present still after full term," said one of the study's lead authors, Dr Lorenzo Fabrizi (UCL Biosciences). "The brain of a preterm baby is not merely a downsized version of that of an adult, but is uniquely designed to prepare itself for the external world." For the study, the team identified the source of the most common type of bursts, called delta brush events, in 10 healthy preterm infants aged 32-36 postmenstrual weeks using a simultaneous combination of two techniques: an electroencephalogram (EEG) to identify the signal and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to map its location.