Brain impairments in premature infants may begin in the womb | Hacker News Reader

Brain impairments in premature infants may begin in the womb

sciencebulletin.org

28 pointsupen10 comments

I was born almost a month premature. I didn't start talking until much later than my siblings and am markedly less social. I've also read that brain lateralization may occur later in pregnancy and although my family is all right-handed, I am very left side dominant. It's kind of a bummer to read this, but at least anecdotally, it agrees my experience.

One question, where you in NICU?

I'm not sure. I know it was fairly serious, but I don't know the details.

Thanks

I think once you're near something like 34-36 weeks, it's only a thing if you have problems staying warm or eating or breathing. I was late preterm too like your parent comment and I did not have a nicu stay.

Exact same situation. I never struggled academically, but to this day I'm still socially reserved.

Here's a great paper comparing lefties in terms of several long-term outcomes, none of them are good :( http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/joshuagoodman/files/rwp12-0...

The paper does include the potential link between left-handedness and pre-term birth.

I was born more than a month premature and was in a NICU. I did ok in school/uni, but, I have very poor social skills compared to my siblings. I wonder if this is a contributing factor. Oh well, I guess there is nothing you can do after the fact. Just try to get on with things. On the bright side, my lack of social skills has allowed me to get really good at staring at a screen and pressing buttons! :)

This is interesting. I remember learning in a developmental biology course that the completion of brain development is one of the signals that triggers birth for human neonates.These results suggest that there might be problems throughout the upstream brain development cascade in these premature infants.

I was born 2 months early! Not sure I have anything to blame on it.

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