Inhibition abilities and functional brain connectivity in school-aged term-born and preterm-born children

Background

Inhibition abilities are known to have impact on self-regulation, behavior, and academic success, and they are frequently impaired in children born preterm. We investigated the possible contributions of resting-state functional brain connectivity to inhibition following preterm birth.

Methods

Forty-four preterm and 59 term-born participants aged 8–13 years were administered two inhibition tasks and resting-state functional MRI was performed. Functional connectivity (FC) networks were compared between groups using network-based statistics. Associations of FCNs and inhibition abilities were investigated through multivariate linear regression models accounting for the interaction between birth status and inhibition.

Results

NBS revealed weaker FC in children born preterm compared to term-born peers in connections between motor and supplementary motor regions, frontal lobe, precuneus, and insula. Irrespective of birth status, connections between the cerebellum, frontal, and occipital lobes and inter-lobar, subcortical, intra-hemispheric long-range connections were positively correlated with one of the two inhibition tasks.

Conclusions

Preterm birth results in long-term alterations of FC at network level but these FCN alterations do not specifically account for inhibition problems in children born very preterm.

Impact

Irrespective of birth status, significant associations were found between the subdomain of response inhibition and functional connectivity in some subnetworks.

A group comparisons of functional brain connectivity measured by rsfMRI in school-aged children born very preterm and at term.

The investigation of network-level functional connectivity at rest does not appear adequate to explain differences in inhibition abilities between children born very preterm and at term, hence other imaging techniques might be more suited to explore the underlying neural mechanisms of inhibition abilities in school-aged children born very preterm.