How does being born prematurely affect you? Does this affect the intelligence of premature babies? Find out in our note.
Every day more premature babies are born. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of children born before the term is around 15 million in the world and continues to increase.
How does being born prematurely affect the intelligence of premature babies? And it is that despite the fact that the survival rate is increasing every day, today specialists are concerned about the quality of life of these little ones.
What are the consequences of being a premature baby?
Premature babies are very fragile. One of the greatest advances in medicine in recent years is that science has managed to save their lives in extreme situations. The survival of premature babies has been assessed in 90% of those born at week 29, according to the Spanish Society of Neonatology. They are the so-called miracle babies and the progress is such that more and more premature babies are born who are born weighing less than 500 grams.
However, how will being premature affect babies as they get older? Different studies have investigated what are the specific brain characteristics of children born prematurely. The results published by the Institute of Psychiatry, London, suggest that being a premature baby has consequences for your brain that are related to worse performance in learning tasks and verbal memory, verbal fluency and executive functions. And most importantly, this brain profile could accompany them into adulthood.
This statement is based on the analysis of the microstructure of the cerebral white matter with a modern neuroimaging technique. Researchers have seen that adults with a history of prematurity had abnormalities in the white matter at the level of the corpus callosum, and also in sensorimotor and association areas on both sides of the brain. Therefore, this profile shows a tendency to have lower IQs than their term-born peers, and a higher frequency of behavioral disturbances and need for academic support.