Altered Brain Signaling Complexity in Preterm-born and Term-born Infants at Term Age: a Functional MRI Study

We compared Hurst exponent (H) values in preterm and term healthy controls to quantify brain signaling criticality using rsfMRI scans. Neonatal data from the Developing Human Connectome Project was analyzed. We found that H significantly increased in the preterm groups longitudinally in all resting state networks. Motor and sensory networks were found to have the greatest increase in H. At term age, very preterm, moderately preterm, and health controls displayed different H values in 8 of the 13 networks examined.