BMC MED Shanghai Jiaotong University: Gestational age at birth is associated with small cerebral cortex volume and cognitive and educational performance during adolescence

Gestational age at birth (GA) is associated
with later cognition and behavior.
However, it is unclear how specific cognitive domains and brain structure develop as they change over the course of pregnancy
.
To this end, scholars from Xinhua Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiaotong University conducted a study
.

This large-scale longitudinal cohort study analyzed the brain volumetric maps
of 11,878 early adolescents aged 9-10 years (baseline) and 5,685 at 11-12 years (2-year follow-up) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study.
According to gestational age, adolescents were divided into five categories: ≤ 33 weeks, 34-35 weeks, 36 weeks, 37-39 weeks, and ≥ 40 weeks
.
The NIH toolbox was used to estimate neurocognitive performance, measured at baseline in 11,878 adolescents, with intelligence and related subscales obtained at 2 years of follow-up (the number of participants ranged from 6185 to 6310 depending on the cognitive domain).

An additional large population cohort of 618,070 ninth grade (15-16 years) secondary school students in the Danish National Register was used to verify the association
between gestational age and academic achievement.

Significant population differences were found across all neurocognitive scores, school grades, and volume of the 25 cortical regions (P < 0.
05, Bonferroni corrected).

Specifically, lower gestational age was associated with lower cognitive levels and school achievement, and was associated
with smaller anterotemporal region, cingulate gyrus, insula, posterior central gyrus, hippocampus, thalamus, and globus pallidus.
These lower brain volumes mediated a link between gestational age and cognitive function (P = 1 × 10 to 8, β = 0.
017, 95% CI: 0.
007 to 0.
028).

Longitudinal analysis showed that preterm adolescents still had smaller brain volume and lower intelligence scores
at ages 11-12 compared with full-term adolescents.

Taken together, these results highlight the relationship between
gestational age at birth and lower brain volume in adolescents, as well as cognitive and educational performance at ages 9-10 and 11-12.

References:

Lower gestational age is associated with lower cortical volume and cognitive and educational performance in adolescence.
BMC Med 20, 424 (2022).
https://doi.
org/10.
1186/s12916-022-02627-3