Greetings All, 

New open access study shows the lasting effects of gentle touch, such as skin to skin contact, in preterm and term infants.  An excerpt from the ScienceDaily news release, which includes an interview with the lead researcher:

Generally speaking, those measurements showed that preterm babies were more likely than full-term babies to have a reduced brain response to gentle touch. Further analysis showed that the brain response to touch was stronger when babies in the NICU spent more time in gentle contact with their parents or healthcare providers. In contrast, the more painful medical procedures those premature infants had to endure, the less their brain responded to gentle touch later. That was true despite the fact that the babies were given pain medications and sugar to make those procedures easier to endure.

"We certainly hoped to see that more positive touch experiences in the hospital would help babies have a more typical perception of touch when they went home," Maitre says. "But, we were very surprised to find out that if babies experience more painful procedures early in life, their sense of gentle touch can be affected."

"Making sure that preterm babies receive positive, supportive touch such as skin-to-skin care by parents is essential to help their brains respond to gentle touch in ways similar to those of babies who experienced an entire pregnancy inside their mother's womb," says Nathalie Maitre of Nationwide Children's Hospital and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. "When parents cannot do this, hospitals may want to consider occupational and physical therapists to provide a carefully planned touch experience, sometimes missing from a hospital setting."

Link to full ScienceDaily article:  https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170316120502.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain%2Finfant_and_preschool_learning+%28Infant+and+Preschool+Learning+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

Citation:  Maitre NL, Key AP, Chorna OD, Slaughter JC, Matusz PJ, Wallace MT, Murray M. The Dual Nature of Early-Life Experience on Somatosensory Processing in the Human Infant Brain. Current Biology 2017 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2017.02.036

With best regards,

Debra Swank, RN BSN IBCLC
Ocala, Florida USA
More Than Reflexes Education
http://www.MoreThanReflexes.org

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