Listening to Mom in the NICU: Neural, Clinical and Language Outcomes

Stanford University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Premature Birth

Treatments: Behavioral: Language Treatment; Behavioral: Control Treatment

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT02847689

1K99HD084749-01A1 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

32638

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to examine whether playing recordings of a mother's voice to her infant while in the hospital nursery is an effective treatment for promoting healthy brain and language development in infants born preterm.

Full description

Children born preterm are at-risk for developmental language delays. Language problems in preterm children are thought to be related to neurobiological factors, including injuries to white matter structures of the brain and environmental factors, including decreased exposure to maternal speech in the hospital nursery. There is evidence to suggest that maternal speech input may be important for promoting healthy brain and language development.

Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two study groups. Each infant has a 50% chance of being assigned to the group that will listen to a recording of his/her mother's voice and a 50% chance of being assigned to the group that will not be played a voice recording. Mother's of participating infants will have her voice recorded as she reads a common children's storybook. Recordings will be played to infants each day until s/he is discharged from the hospital. Participation in this study requires that all infants receive up to an additional 10 minutes of brain scans as part of his/her routine clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Enrollment: 46 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 24 to 31 weeks old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Infants born preterm at Stanford Children's Hospital between 27 0/7 - 31 6/7 weeks gestational age

Exclusion criteria

• Congenital anomalies
• Recognizable malformation syndromes
• Active seizure disorders
• History of Central Nervous System infections
• Hydrocephalus
• Major sensori-neural hearing loss
• Likelihood to be transferred from NICU to alternate care facility or home environment prior to 36 weeks PMA
• Intraventricular Hemorrhage Grades III-IV
• Cystic periventricular leukomalacia (PVL)
• Surgical treatment for necrotizing enterocolitis
• Small for gestational age (SGA) <3 percentile and/or Intra-uterine growth restriction (IUGR) no head sparing
• Twin-to-twin transfusions

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

---

46 participants in 2 patient groups

Language Treatment Arm

Experimental group

Description:

An infant participant randomized to the language treatment arm will be played recordings of his/her mother's voice 2-3 hours daily in the intermediate care nursery until discharge.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Language Treatment

Control Treatment Arm

Sham Comparator group

Description:

An infant participant randomized to the control treatment arm will receive standard of care. Standard of care does not include being played recordings of his/her mother's voice while admitted to the intermediate care nursery. However, an infant randomized to the control treatment will have the same auditory equipment placed in his/her isolette or crib as an infant randomized to the Language Treatment Arm.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Control Treatment