Being held by a parent with skin-to-skin contact reduces how strongly neonates’ brains respond to a painful medical stimulus, supporting the importance of touch in neonatal development, suggests a new UK-led study.
The study, published in the European Journal of Pain, involved 27 infants, 0-96 days old and born premature or at term age, at University College London Hospitals.
Global topographic analysis was used to identify the presence and inter‐group differences in noxious‐related activity in three separate parental contexts. Electroencephalograph was recorded during a clinically required heel lance in three age and sex‐matched groups of neonates while held by a parent in skin‐to‐skin (n=9), while held by a parent with clothing (n=9) or not held at all, but in individualised care (n=9).
The researchers found that the initial brain response to the pain was the same, but the lance elicited a sequence of four-to-five event‐related potentials (ERPs), including the noxious ERP (nERP), which was smallest for infants held skin‐to‐skin and largest for infants held with clothing (P=.016). The nERP was then followed by additional and divergent long‐latency ERPs (>750 ms post‐lance), not previously described, in each of the groups, suggesting the engagement of different higher level cortical processes depending on parental contact.
Co-author Dr Judith Meek said: “Parents and clinicians have known for many years how important skin to skin care is for babies in NICU. Now we have been able to demonstrate that this has a solid neurophysiological basis, which is an exciting discovery.”
First author Dr Laura Jones, University College London, said: “Our findings may lend new insights into how babies learn to process threats, as they are particularly sensitive to maternal cues.”
