Spontaneous kicking in full-term and preterm infants with and without white matter disorder.

Early damage to white matter of the brain may have developmental consequences for prematurely born infants including the coordination of leg movements. Our perspective is that white matter damage initiates an ontogenetic course that may lead to movement dysfunction leading to disability. In this study, spontaneous kicking in the human infant is a "window" for evaluating the potential consequences of perinatal brain damage for sensori-motor coordination. We compare the intra-limb coordination patterns of 5-month-old premature infants with white matter damage (PTWMD) to a group of prematurely born infants without WMD (PT) and a group of full-term (FT) infants. The PT group demonstrates advanced kicking patterns in comparison to both the PTWMD and FT groups. The PTWMD group has less mature patterns than the FT group on some, but not all measures. The movement challenge for PTWMD infants may be in the transition from spontaneous kicking to movements with the legs that require decoupling of intralimb joints.

[1]  S. Miller,et al.  Evidence of activity-dependent withdrawal of corticospinal projections during human development , 2001, Neurology.

[2]  Joseph J. Volpe,et al.  Neuronal Proliferation, Migration, Organization, and Myelination , 2008 .

[3]  B. Hopkins,et al.  Development of spontaneous leg movements in infants with and without periventricular leukomalacia , 2000, Experimental Brain Research.

[4]  Suh-Fang Jeng,et al.  Kinematic analysis of kicking movements in preterm infants with very low birth weight and full-term infants. , 2002, Physical therapy.

[5]  Johanna Jonsdottir,et al.  Kicking coordination captures differences between full-term and premature infants with white matter disorder. , 2004, Human Movement Science.

[6]  Marilee C Allen,et al.  Neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants , 2008, Current opinion in neurology.

[7]  E. Saltzman,et al.  Making the mobile move: Constraining task and environment , 2002 .

[8]  C. Heriza,et al.  Comparison of leg movements in preterm infants at term with healthy full-term infants. , 1988, Physical therapy.

[9]  R C Wagenaar,et al.  Effects of walking velocity on relative phase dynamics in the trunk in human walking. , 1996, Journal of biomechanics.

[10]  G Cioni,et al.  Rhythmical leg movements in low-risk and brain-damaged preterm infants. , 1996, Early human development.

[11]  Kristin Musselman,et al.  Infant stepping: a window to the behaviour of the human pattern generator for walking. , 2004, Canadian journal of physiology and pharmacology.

[12]  Jaynie F. Yang,et al.  Interlimb coordination in rhythmic leg movements: spontaneous and training-induced manifestations in human infants. , 2008, Journal of neurophysiology.

[13]  J. F. Yang,et al.  Could different directions of infant stepping be controlled by the same locomotor central pattern generator? , 2000, Journal of neurophysiology.

[14]  J. Volpe.  Brain injury in premature infants: a complex amalgam of destructive and developmental disturbances , 2009, The Lancet Neurology.

[15]  J. Piek.  A quantitative analysis of spontaneous kicking in two-month-old infants , 1996 .

[16]  W. J. Beek,et al.  The organization of leg movements in preterm and full-term infants after term age. , 1996, Developmental psychobiology.

[17]  J. Galloway,et al.  Movement Training Advances the Emergence of Reaching in Infants Born at Less Than 33 Weeks of Gestational Age: A Randomized Clinical Trial , 2008, Physical Therapy.

[18]  E Thelen,et al.  Developmental origins of motor coordination: leg movements in human infants. , 1985, Developmental psychobiology.

[19]  G. Cioni,et al.  Kinematic and qualitative analysis of lower-extremity movements in preterm infants with brain lesions. , 1999, Physical therapy.

[20]  E. Thelen,et al.  Adaptive Dynamics of the Leg Movement Patterns of Human Infants: I. The Effects of Posture on Spontaneous Kicking. , 1994, Journal of motor behavior.

[21]  P. Gressens,et al.  Neuronal damage accompanies perinatal white-matter damage , 2007, Trends in Neurosciences.

[22]  Jan P. Piek,et al.  Spontaneous kicking in fullterm and preterm infants: Are there leg asymmetries? , 1999 .