新生儿真菌血症的调查与分析

了解新生儿真菌血症的流行病学特征,为制定有效的预防措施提供科学依据。采取回顾性调查及病例对照研究方法,分析我院2008年~2010年新生儿真菌血症患者及对照的临床资料、实验室检查结果。结果早产儿及极低体重儿易发生真菌血流感染,感染菌株以非白色念珠菌为最常见,预防性抗真菌药的目标人群可定为早产儿、极低体重儿及细菌性菌血症患儿。     

Mouthing and grasping in neonates: Evidence for the early detection of what hard or soft substances afford for action

Newborns and 2- and 3-month-old infants were presented for 3 min with a rigid or an elastic object either introduced into their mouths for mouthing or into their right hands for grasping. Each object was connected to an air pressure transducer allowing polygraphic recording of the positive pressure variations applied by the infant to the object. Results indicate that, from birth, infants haptically discriminate between the rigidity and elasticity of objects by generating different rates and patterns of responses. Furthermore, the differential haptic responding by the infant does not manifest itself in an analogous manner for the oral or the manual modality of response but is reversed relative to the two objects' properties. During the first 3 months, a developmental trend is observed wherein the infant's oral response rates and patterns begin to align themselves with her/his manual responding to either one of the two objects. Relative to a similar output of positive pressures generated orally or manually, these observations show that from birth the infant's response is both object-dependent (hard vs. soft substance) and modality-dependent (oral vs. manual condition). These results are interpreted as suggesting that early mouthing and grasping are not merely controlled by reflexive (automatic) mechanisms but rather are guided by what objects afford for functional actions.     

新生儿癫痫与脑发育的关系

患有癫痈的新生儿在成年期癫痫发作、智能障碍和行为问题的发生率明显增高。新生儿癫痈远期危害的确切机制尚不明确。癫痫发作对成熟脑和发育脑的影响具有差异性,新生儿期癫痈发作可能通过干扰脑的正常发育,引起神经系统发育障碍。本文对新生儿癫痫与脑发育研究中亟待解决的问题作一初步探讨。     

Gender‐related differences in neonatal imitation

Socio‐emotional behaviour is in part sex‐related in humans, although the contribution of the biological and socio‐cultural factors is not yet known. This study explores sex‐related differences during the earliest communicative exchange, the neonatal imitation in 43 newborn infants (3–96 hours old) using an index finger extension imitative gesture. Results showed that although the experimenter presented comparable stimuli to both sexes, and the total number of movements was similar in boys and girls, girls showed more fine motor movements, a higher number of specific imitative gestures, responded faster during the imitation and showed a higher baseline heart rate during the experiment. Newborn girls, with their faster and more accurate imitative abilities, may create a more responsive and interactive social environment, which in turn may lead to differences in socio‐emotional and cognitive development between girls and boys. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neonatal imitation, gaze aversion, and mother-infant interaction

A relationship between elicited imitation in neonates and social interaction has been proposed by several investigators. The present work examines if such a relationship can be found when studying neonatal imitation, gaze aversion, and mother-infant interaction. Thirty-two infants were observed at 2 to 3 days, 3 weeks, and 3 months of age. Imitation of tongue protrusion and mouth opening was assessed in all three observations. In addition, a face-to-face interaction between mother and child was included when the child reached 3 months of age. The most striking result was a negative relationship between the infants' brief gaze aversion observed at 3 months of age while interacting with their mothers and the infants' imitative reactions at 2 to 3 days, 3 weeks, and 3 months of age. Behaviorally, these patterns indicate that high-imitating infants tend to display fewer episodes of brief gaze aversion when interacting with their mothers.     

Effects of nonnutritive sucking on state and activity: Term-preterm comparisons

The effects of ad libitum access to a pacifier on the behavioral state and motor activity of preterm infants have been compared with those observed in full-term neonates. Regardless of maturity, nonnutritive sucking (NNS) decreases the amount of time spent in active states and increases that spent in quiescent states, lengthens the longest state bout, and decreases the frequency of state transitions. NNS also reduces overall motor activity as well as that during Active Sleep. Provided such ad libitum sucking opportunity, preterm infants thus appear to derive no less benefit from NNS than do term neonates. This result contrasts with an earlier finding that preterms are less soothed by NNA than are term infants.     

血清唾液酸测定对新生儿及幼儿期细菌性肺炎临床意义的比较分析

为了探讨血清唾液酸（SA）测定在新生儿及幼儿细菌性肺炎的意义,我们测定了72例新生儿及98例幼儿细菌性肺炎患者血清SA水平。结果显示幼儿肺炎组SA水平在1天~3天内增加到（782.1±16.5）,与幼儿非肺炎对照组（591.9±11.5）比较差异具有统计学意义（P〈0.001）。新生儿非肺炎组SA水平保持在（357.8±9.1）,明显低于幼儿对照组（P〈0.001）。而新生儿肺炎组在起病1天~3天内增加到（604.1±15.4）,明显高于新生儿非肺炎组（P〈0.001）,但与幼儿对照组没有差异。因此,血清SA水平在幼儿时期即已达到成人水平,而新生儿细菌性肺炎患者虽然SA在正常成人标准范围内,但明显高于非肺炎新生儿水平。     

Discrimination of pitch contours by neonates

With the high-amplitude sucking procedure, newborns were presented with two lists of phonetically varied Japanese words differing in pitch contour. Discrimination of the lists was found, thus indicating that newborns are able to extract pitch contour information at the word level.     

Tracking transitional probabilities and segmenting auditory sequences are dissociable processes in adults and neonates

Since speech is a continuous stream with no systematic boundaries between words, how do pre-verbal infants manage to discover words? A proposed solution is that they might use the transitional probability between adjacent syllables, which drops at word boundaries. Here, we tested the limits of this mechanism by increasing the size of the word-unit to four syllables, and its automaticity by testing asleep neonates. Using markers of statistical learning in neonates’ EEG, compared to adult behavioral performances in the same task, we confirmed that statistical learning is automatic enough to be efficient even in sleeping neonates. We also revealed that: (1) Successfully tracking transition probabilities (TP) in a sequence is not sufficient to segment it. (2) Prosodic cues, as subtle as subliminal pauses, enable to recover words segmenting capacities. (3) Adults’ and neonates’ capacities to segment streams seem remarkably similar despite the difference of maturation and expertise. Finally, we observed that learning increased the overall similarity of neural responses across infants during exposure to the stream, providing a novel neural marker to monitor learning. Thus, from birth, infants are equipped with adult-like tools, allowing them to extract small coherent word-like units from auditory streams, based on the combination of statistical analyses and auditory parsing cues.

Research Highlights

• Successfully tracking transitional probabilities in a sequence is not always sufficient to segment it.
• Word segmentation solely based on transitional probability is limited to bi- or tri-syllabic elements.
• Prosodic cues, as subtle as subliminal pauses, enable to recover chunking capacities in sleeping neonates and awake adults for quadriplets.

     

Mothers with Depressive Symptoms Touching Newborns

Previous research has demonstrated the positive effects of early contact on mother–infant touching behaviours. The present study investigated whether the type of maternal touching, shortly after birth, is also determined by the mother's mood state. Mothers with depressive symptoms were compared to non-depressive mothers 1 day after delivery on how they touched their newborns following an initial feeding. The results were counter-intuitive in that no differences were found between mothers with depressive symptoms and non-depressive mothers in type of maternal touching. However, mothers with depressive symptoms talked to their infants less often and talked on the phone more often. In addition, mothers with depressive symptoms showed more neutral and negative facial expressions and fewer positive and more neutral vocal expressions.     

Roots of smile: a preterm neonates' study

Twenty-two preterm neonates were observed 1 h per neonate in the NICU. Ninety-five spontaneous smiles were recorded. Younger and smaller neonates showed more and longer spontaneous smiles than older and larger. The youngest neonate was 200 days from conception on the observational day. She was 511 g. This infant showed spontaneous smiles. The roots of spontaneous smiles are discussed.     

The role of the mother's voice in developing mother's face preference: Evidence for intermodal perception at birth

Four experiments are described which investigated the role of the mother's voice in facilitating recognition of the mother's face at birth. Experiment 1 replicated our previous findings (Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 1989; 7: 3–15; The origins of human face perception by very young infants. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, 1990) indicating a preference for the mother's face when a control for the mother's voice and odours was used only during the testing. A second experiment adopted the same procedures, but controlled for the mother's voice from birth through testing. The neonates were at no time exposed to their mother's voice. Under these conditions, no preference was found. Further, neonates showed only few head turns towards both the mother and the stranger during the testing. Experiment 3 looked at the number of head turns under conditions where the newborn infants were exposed to both the mother's voice and face from birth to 5 to 15 min prior to testing. Again, a strong preference for the mother's face was demonstrated. Such preference, however, vanished in Experiment 4, when neonates had no previous exposure to the mother's voice–face combination. The conclusion drawn is that a prior experience with both the mother's voice and face is necessary for the development of face recognition, and that intermodal perception is evident at birth. The neonates' ability to recognize the face of the mother is most likely to be rooted in prenatal learning of the mother's voice. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Choice in quail neonates: the origins of generalized matching

Although newborns have surprised scientists with their learning skills, proficiency on concurrent schedules of reinforcement requires (in effect) the ability to integrate and compare behavior–consequence relations over time. Can very young animals obey the quantitative relation that applies to such repeated choices, the generalized matching law? The provenance of the skill is not well understood, and this study provides the first investigation of matching in neonates. Northern bobwhite (Colinus virginianus) hatchlings pecked left and right targets on a touchscreen for heat delivery on a concurrent variable-interval reinforcement schedule. Within 5 days after hatching, the chicks showed sensitivity levels significantly greater than zero, but short of typical adult levels. However, stable sequential patterns emerged almost immediately, including a consistent choose-rich tendency after unreinforced responses, one that entails some degree of temporal integration. These exploratory data suggest that the basic ability to match develops quickly in this precocial species, but that more extensive experience may be required to achieve the higher sensitivities typically seen in adults.     

Seeing and hearing and space and space and time

A previous experiment had shown spatial location to be judged in terms of the framework provided by the modality in which stimuli were presented. In the present study, digits were either auditorally or visually presented, and in either form the three digits appeared successivly to the left, in the center, and to the right of the S. The digit which occurred temporally in the middle of the sequence was never central from the spatial viewpoint. The S was asked to indicate which digit was the middle one. Ss were blind, deaf, or normal. The deaf and two control groups saw visual displays, and the blind and their controls heard auditory displays. The former groups predominantly chose the spatially middle digit and the latter groups the temporally middle. It was concluded that modality of presentation was the trigger which switched in the coding dimension of time or space.