Altered functional neuroanatomy of response inhibition in adolescent males who were born very preterm.

Abstract

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate the hypothesis that males who were born very preterm may show differences in relative strength of blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) signals in selective brain areas during performance of a simple response inhibition task compared with term-born controls. Participants were eight males (mean gestational age at birth 28wks, [SD 2]; mean age at testing 16y, [SD 1] and 14 controls matched for sex, age (mean age 17y, [SD 1]), and IQ. A 'go-no-go' task was used to assess response selection and motor response inhibition in response to a visual stimulus. When the 'no-go' condition was contrasted with an attentional c..