TY - JOUR
T1 - An Animal Model of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Exposure to Light and Sound in the Preterm Infant
AU - Gay, Jennifer D.
AU - Dangcil, Evelynne
AU - Nacipucha, Jacqueline
AU - Botrous, Jonathon E.
AU - Suresh, Nikhil
AU - Tucker, Aaron
AU - Carayannopoulos, Nicolas L.
AU - Khan, Muhammad R.
AU - Meng, Raphael
AU - Yao, Justin D.
AU - Wackym, P. Ashley
AU - Mowery, Todd M.
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/9/1
Y1 - 2023/9/1
N2 - According to theWorld Health Organization, ∼15 million children are born prematurely each year.Many of these infants end up spending days to weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Infants who are born prematurely are often exposed to noise and light levels that affect their auditory and visual development. Children often have long-term impairments in cognition, visuospatial processing, hearing, and language.We have developed a rodentmodel of NICU exposure to light and sound using the Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus), which has a low-frequency human-like audiogram and is altricial. To simulate preterm infancy, the eyes and ears were opened prematurely, and animals were exposed to the NICU-like sensory environment throughout the gerbil s cortical critical period of auditory development. After the animals matured into adults, auditory perceptual testing was carried out followed by auditory brainstem response recordings and then histology to assess the white matter morphology of various brain regions. Compared to normal hearing control animals, NICU sensory-exposed animals had significant impairments in learning at later stages of training, increased auditory thresholds reflecting hearing loss, and smaller cerebellar white matter volumes. These have all been reported in longitudinal studies of preterm infants. These preliminary results suggest that this animal model could provide researchers with an ethical way to explore the effects of the sensory environment in the NICU on the preterm infants brain development.
AB - According to theWorld Health Organization, ∼15 million children are born prematurely each year.Many of these infants end up spending days to weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Infants who are born prematurely are often exposed to noise and light levels that affect their auditory and visual development. Children often have long-term impairments in cognition, visuospatial processing, hearing, and language.We have developed a rodentmodel of NICU exposure to light and sound using the Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus), which has a low-frequency human-like audiogram and is altricial. To simulate preterm infancy, the eyes and ears were opened prematurely, and animals were exposed to the NICU-like sensory environment throughout the gerbil s cortical critical period of auditory development. After the animals matured into adults, auditory perceptual testing was carried out followed by auditory brainstem response recordings and then histology to assess the white matter morphology of various brain regions. Compared to normal hearing control animals, NICU sensory-exposed animals had significant impairments in learning at later stages of training, increased auditory thresholds reflecting hearing loss, and smaller cerebellar white matter volumes. These have all been reported in longitudinal studies of preterm infants. These preliminary results suggest that this animal model could provide researchers with an ethical way to explore the effects of the sensory environment in the NICU on the preterm infants brain development.
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U2 - 10.1093/icb/icad020
DO - 10.1093/icb/icad020
M3 - Article
C2 - 37164937
SN - 1540-7063
VL - 63
SP - 585
EP - 596
JO - Integrative and Comparative Biology
JF - Integrative and Comparative Biology
IS - 3
ER -