Can we determine feeding ability of newborns by imaging their brain?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this publication<\/a> our purpose was to investigate the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a tool for assessing how a baby would develop feeding capabilities. Feeding capability, or lack thereof, is an issue when babies are born before completing 37 weeks of pregnancy, also known as preterm. The reason why this is a problem is because at preterm the brain (cerebrum and cerebellum) is not fully developed. Meaning, for example, if the baby is born around 35 weeks, the brain, an organ which essentially controls our body and senses, still needs time to grow in size and function. Ideally, 39 weeks is best for a healthy pregnancy. Other organs needing time to fully develop are the lungs and liver. Thus, consequences of early birth include: breathing, hearing and vision problems as well as developmental delay and cerebral palsy. For the babies born preterm, they are immediately placed in infant incubators in an effort to minimize stimulation and replicate the mother\u2019s womb. The good news for those trying to get pregnant is that there are ways to prevent premature births which mainly consist of being conscious of lifestyle and possibly modifying habits. More on this in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Depending\non the severity of the feeding problem, the baby is either fed orally (by\nmouth) or by gastrostomy. Gastrostomy is a procedure which consists of\ninserting a tube (G-Tube) into the baby\u2019s stomach because they are not able to\nfeed orally. Not being able to feed through the mouth can be life threatening\nespecially if the parents are unaware that their baby has feeding difficulties.\nSwallowing difficulties, also known as dysphagia, can cause the baby to choke\non milk or other liquids\/food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nsome cases, the reason causing the swallowing difficulty is quite obvious like\na brain lesion, damage in the brain. In other cases, no obvious lesion is seen\nin brain imaging scans such as MRI. Since this is the case, we ask the\nquestion. If brain scans do not necessarily indicate that a baby may or may not\nhave dysphagia, then how can they indicate the progress, or outcome, of\ntreatment and therapy? To answer this question an extensive investigation of data\nfrom forty-three babies was performed in this study. The qualitative aspect included\nvisual inspection the brain images. The quantitative (measuring size, area and\nvolume) assessment included different regions of the brain as well as additional\nclinical data for the overall calculations and assessment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the end of the study we found some differences between cerebrum and cerebellum size between babies who were orally versus G-Tube fed. However, lesions were not related to swallowing capability. Meaning, a baby could have a big lesion in their brain and have no swallowing disorder while other babies could have no brain lesions and have a swallowing disorder. So, an MRI was not indicative of brain function or dysfunction. To better understand this function or lack thereof we needed to introduce a different type of brain scan. An ideal technology for performing this on these infants is functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as we have demonstrated in our other publications<\/a> listed below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can we determine feeding ability of newborns by imaging their brain? In this publication our purpose was to investigate the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as a tool for assessing how a baby would develop feeding capabilities. Feeding capability, or lack thereof, is an issue when babies are born before completing 37 weeks of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":9382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,9,1],"tags":[14,18,29,32,34,86,47,51,57],"class_list":["post-9315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education-2","category-health","category-lifestyle","category-science","tag-brain","tag-clinical-research","tag-education-2","tag-fnirs","tag-functional-near-infrared-spectroscopy","tag-infants","tag-nasser-kashou","tag-neuroscience","tag-research"],"modified_by":"Nasser Kashou","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/nasser-kashou-baby-brain.png?fit=928%2C308&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9315"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9381,"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9315\/revisions\/9381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nasserkashou.com\/nk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}