Prenatal environment is associated with the pace of cortical network development over the first three years of life.

Environmental influences on brain structure and function during early development have been well-characterized. In pre-registered analyses, we test the theory that socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with differences in trajectories of intrinsic brain network development from birth to three years ( = 261). Prenatal SES is associated with developmental increases in cortical network segregation, with neonates and toddlers from lower-SES backgrounds showing a steeper increase in cortical network segregation with age, consistent with accelerated network development.

Impact of prenatal exposure characterization on early risk detection: Methodologic insights for the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) study.

Background: A major challenge in prenatal drug exposure research concerns the balance of measurement quality with sample sizes necessary to address confounders. To inform the selection of optimal exposure measures for the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, we employed integrated analysis to determine how different methods used to characterize prenatal tobacco exposure influence the detection of exposure-related risk, as reflected in normal variations in birth weight.

Methods: Participants were N = 2323 mother-infant dyads derived from 7 independent developmental cohorts harmonized on measures of exposure, outcome (birthweight), and covariates.

Assessment: The Newborn.

Neonatal neurobehavioral assessment has become a standardized component of clinical care provided to newborn infants, guiding neonatal clinical care and subsequent access to early interventions and services. Links between neonatal assessment and neurosensory and motor impairments in high-risk infants have been relatively well established. In contrast, the extent to which newborn neurobehavioral assessment might also facilitate the early identification of infants susceptible to socioemotional impairments in early childhood is less well documented.

Evaluating the Sensitivity of Electronic Fetal Monitoring Patterns for the Prediction of Intraventricular Hemorrhage.

 We evaluated electronic fetal (heart rate) monitoring (EFM) patterns among very preterm infants with and without intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) to evaluate the test characteristics of EFM for the prediction of IVH.  We performed a case-control study of preterm infants born ≤ 30 weeks' gestation over a 6-year period. We evaluated differences in EFM patterns between those (cases) with and without IVH (controls).