Figure 8.

Correlation of abnormal NS patterns with integrity of sensorimotor fibers in infants with established in infants with established brain injury [from Tamilia et al. (31)]. (A) Anatomically defined regions of interest overlaid on the T1 MRI of a female 4 day old preterm infant. On the left, regions of interest for the motor tracts; in the middle, regions of interest for the sensory tracts; on the right, regions of interest corresponding to the corpus callosum. (B) Corpus callosum (magenta) overlaid on the fractional anisotropy color-maps. (C) Axial view of the motor (in yellow) and sensory (in purple) tracts reconstructed via probabilistic diffusion imaging tractography, along with the regions of interest used for their delineation. Neural tracts and regions of interest are overlaid on the patient's MRI that shows ischemic injury in the right frontal lobe. (D) The values of nutritive sucking smoothness and irregularity are predictive of the fractional anisotropy and mean diffusivity values, respectively, for the motor tracts. High smoothness in the nutritive sucking pattern, which is indicative of good sucking skills, is associated with high-fractional anisotropy, which is indicative of intact neural tracts. High irregularity in nutritive sucking, which is indicative of poor sucking skills, is associated with high-mean diffusivity, which is indicative of low integrity of neural tracts. (E) Two bursts of nutritive sucking from patients 3* and 8*. The left waveform demonstrates a poor NS behavior of patient 3* characterized by low smoothness and high irregularity (i.e., presence of multiple peaks); while the right waveform demonstrates a good NS behavior of patient 8* characterized by the smooth and regular nutritive sucking pattern.