title: Visual fixation in human newborns correlates with extensive white matter networks and predicts long-term neurocognitive development.
abstract: Infants are well known to seek eye contact, and they prefer to fixate on developmentally meaningful objects, such as the human face. It is also known, that visual abilities are important for the developmental cascades of cognition from later infancy to childhood. It is less understood, however, whether newborn visual abilities relate to later cognitive development, and whether newborn ability for visual fixation can be assigned to early microstructural maturation. Here, we investigate relationship between newborn visual fixation (VF) and gaze behavior (GB) to performance in visuomotor and visual reasoning tasks in two cohorts with cognitive follow-up at 2 (n = 57) and 5 (n = 1410) years of age. We also analyzed brain microstructural correlates to VF (n = 45) by voxel-based analysis of fractional anisotropy (FA) in newborn diffusion tensor imaging. Our results show that newborn VF is significantly related to visual-motor performance at both 2 and 5 years, as well as to visual reasoning at 5 years of age. Moreover, good newborn VF relates to widely increased FA levels across the white matter. Comparison to motor performance indicated that early VF is preferentially related to visuocognitive development, and that early motor performance relates neither to white matter integrity nor to visuocognitive development. The present findings suggest that newborn VF is supported by brainwide subcortical networks and it represents an early building block for the developmental cascades of cognition.
authors: Departments of Clinical Neurophysiology, HUS Medical Imaging Center, and Neurological Sciences.
authors: Susanna
authors: S
authors: Stjerna
authors: Departments of Clinical Neurophysiology, HUS Medical Imaging Center, and Neurological Sciences, Physics, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Central Hospital, Helsinki 00029, Finland.
authors: Viljami
authors: V
authors: Sairanen
authors: Departments of Clinical Neurophysiology, HUS Medical Imaging Center, and Neurological Sciences.
authors: Riitta
authors: R
authors: Gröhn
authors: Pediatrics.
authors: Sture
authors: S
authors: Andersson
authors: Pediatrics.
authors: Marjo
authors: M
authors: Metsäranta
authors: Child Neurology, and.
authors: Aulikki
authors: A
authors: Lano
authors: Departments of Clinical Neurophysiology, HUS Medical Imaging Center, and Neurological Sciences, Pediatrics, sampsa.vanhatalo@helsinki.fi.
authors: Sampsa
authors: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9771-7061
authors: S
authors: Vanhatalo
mesh_terms: D016880:Anisotropy; D001921:Brain / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000502:physiology*; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D056324:Diffusion Tensor Imaging; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology; D066127:White Matter / Q000254:growth & development / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: DTI; attention; biomarker; early cognition; neonatal; visual function