EARTHQUAKES PROVE TO BE AN UNEXPECTED HELP IN INTERPRETING BRAIN ACTIVITY OF VERY PREMATURE BABIES
University of Helsinki
researchers have partnered with Swedish and Australian researchers to create a
"brainstorm barometer," which allows computers to calculate the brain
functions of very premature babies during their first hours of life. The new
research method is based on the hypothesis that the brainstorms generated by
the billions of neurons inside a baby's head are governed by the same rules as
other massive natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, forest fires or snow
avalanches.
Giant strides have
been taken in the early care of very premature infants in postnatal intensive
care units during the past two decades. Doctors can now support the function of
especially the lungs, heart and the circulatory system so as to guarantee the survival
of most of even extremely premature infants. Despite a good start, many of
these may still have lifelong problems with brain function, such as attention
deficit disorders or difficulty with visual function. For this reason, the
primary focus of developing care for premature infants has been on securing
brain development.
The biggest risks in
the development of a very premature baby are concentrated on the first days of
life, when intensive care seeks to find the care balance suitable for each
individual child.
"At this stage it
would be vitally important to be able to track the child's brain function and
to identify the babies whose brains are at particular risk," says Sampsa
Vanhatalo, PhD, who leads the University of Helsinki's Baby Brain Activity
(BABA) research group based at the HUS Children's Hospital.
The brains of very
premature babies being treated in intensive care have been tracked with
continuous electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring, but evaluating the EEG
results has proven to be a challenge:
"The brain
function of very premature babies is completely different from that of older
children or adults, meaning that the currently used methods of EEG
interpretation are poorly suited for use on premature babies," Vanhatalo
explains.
Storms help the brain
mature
Researchers have found
that certain episodes, brainstorms of a kind, occur in the brains of very
premature babies and are critical for the maturation of the baby's brain.
Together with Swedish and Australian researchers, Vanhatalo has now developed a
completely new way of evaluating such brainstorms in newborn very premature
infants.
"Our research was
published in the journal Brain, and it is the result of exceptionally
broad-based international cooperation. It involved specialists of different
medical fields, physicists, mathematicians and engineers," Vanhatalo says.
The patient material
for the research came from Dr. Lena Hellström-Westas' research on premature
babies in Sweden. Hellström-Westas is a professor in neonatology at Uppsala
University. Vanhatalo contributed the neurophysiological expertise of his research
group. Finally, Professor Michael Breakspear's computational neuroscience
research group in Australia developed a new kind of analysis method for the EEG
signal.
The laws of nature
hold true in the brain
Breakspear's research
group began to develop mathematical methods used in geology and basic physics
research after it was found that the brainstorms in very premature babies were
astonishingly similar to the "crackling noise" that occurs on small
scales in weakly magnetised metals and large-scales during earthquakes.
Ultimately, the
research groups worked together to generate a clear instrument, a brainstorm
barometer if you will, which can be used by a computer to calculate the state
of a very premature baby's brain during the first hours of life. Of greatest
clinical interest was the observation that the results from this barometer
correlated significantly with the child's cognitive development at age two.
"In terms of
science, this has already revolutionised the idea of what we can observe of the
brain function in very premature babies. This method is the first source of
objective data on the messages the brain of a very premature baby may be
sending to the doctors taking care of the child during the first hours of
life," Vanhatalo describes. "It's still too early to say how the
brainstorm measurements we have discovered will impact the care given to each
premature baby. Our discovery helps doctors identify which children are in need
of special attention, and which ones have brains that are fine on their own.
This is crucial information that opens the door for new targeted care
studies."
The EEG instrument
created in the study is a collection of sophisticated mathematical functions,
combined ingeniously to create a software component for analysing the EEG
signal. This component can be added to the software of existing brain monitors.
In terms of technology, the adoption of the method is no more difficult than
downloading new apps onto our smartphones.
"The interest of
EEG monitor manufacturers to engage in product development will be the
bottleneck. Luckily the market is very competitive, and new manufacturers need
to introduce innovations that are necessary for hospital work," Vanhatalo
points out.
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