Multimodal MRI Investigation of Emotional Prosody Recognition and Emotion Regulation in School-Age Children Born Very Preterm
Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Children born very preterm, before 32 weeks’ gestation, are at elevated risk for socio-emotional difficulties, yet the neural substrates of these difficulties at school age remain incompletely characterised. This study examined emotional prosody recognition and emotion regulation in very preterm (VPT) and full-term children, combining behavioural measures with multimodal neuroimaging to assess whether circuit-level differences are detectable across modalities. Sixty-six children aged 6 to 11 years (VPT n = 40, full-term n = 26) completed a pseudoword emotional prosody recognition task and a parent-report measure of emotion regulation (Emotion Regulation Checklist). A subsample underwent multimodal MRI at 3T, including resting-state fMRI with seed-based amygdala connectivity analysis, grey matter diffusion microstructure using DTI, DKI, and SMT, and white matter tractography via TractSeg across sixteen fronto-temporal tracts. Groups did not differ in overall prosody accuracy or on either emotion regulation subscale. The prosody task nonetheless revealed subtler differences: VPT children produced more concentrated rating profiles and showed globally different confusion patterns. No main effect of group was found in mean amygdala connectivity, grey matter microstructure, or white matter microstructure. Four amygdala connections showed FDR-corrected Group × Age interactions (ACC, bilateral insula, vlPFC; all p < .01), indicating divergent developmental trajectories between groups. The strongest structural finding was reduced leftward asymmetry of SLF-III fractional anisotropy in VPT children (p = .006, η²p = .225), with converging trends for SLF-III radial diffusivity and arcuate fasciculus FA. The results suggest that behavioural performance within the typical range does not rule out differences in underlying neural organisation, and that the altered amygdala connectivity trajectories and atypical fronto-temporal white matter asymmetry observed here provide a meaningful basis for longitudinal follow-up.
Author: Dehondt, Lilou Alix Camille
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7224683460