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Neonatal Hippocampal Volume and Parent Structuring at 18 Months in Relation to Cortisol Stress Regulation Across Early Childhood and Executive Functions at Age 4 Years in Children Born Very Preterm

2025· article· en· W4411277256 on OpenAlexafffund
Mia A. McLean, Joanne Weinberg, Jillian Vinall Miller, Ting Guo, Anne Synnes, Steven P. Miller, Ruth E. Grunau

Bibliographic record

VenueBiological Psychiatry · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldNeuroscience
TopicStress Responses and Cortisol
Canadian institutionsSickKids FoundationAlberta Children's HospitalUniversity of British ColumbiaBC Children's Hospital
FundersCanadian Institutes of Health ResearchMichael Smith Health Research BCBC Children's Hospital
KeywordsPsychologyHippocampal formationDevelopmental psychologyExecutive functionsHippocampusNeuroscienceCognition

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Children born very preterm (≤32 weeks gestational age) display altered neonatal brain maturation and physiological stress regulation that may be related to executive function difficulties. Supportive parent behaviors are related to better neurodevelopment, but children may vary in their susceptibility to such behaviors. We investigated whether supportive parenting during toddlerhood (1.5, 3 years) moderated the relationship between neonatal hippocampal volume, stress dysregulation across childhood, and executive functions. METHODS: In a prospective longitudinal cohort study (N = 188, 100 male), infants born very preterm underwent magnetic resonance imaging at term-equivalent age. At 1.5, 3, and 4.5 years, saliva samples were collected during challenging cognitive tasks and assayed for cortisol; area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg) measured total cortisol output at each age. Parent interaction was rated from films at 1.5 and 3 years, and parents reported on child executive functions at age 4.5 years. RESULTS: Longitudinal modeling revealed no direct relationship between hippocampal volume and cortisol trajectories. Children with smaller neonatal hippocampal volume showed greater susceptibility to poorer parent structuring at 1.5 years, associated with altered AUCg trajectories across age, and displayed fewer executive functions in the face of optimal structuring. Lower AUCg across age was related to more positive parenting (sensitivity, nonhostility, nonintrusiveness) at 3 years and better child executive function at 4.5 years. CONCLUSIONS: In children born very preterm, smaller neonatal hippocampal volume may represent a neurophenotype of susceptibility to parent provisions of structure related to stress regulation across early childhood. Conversely, supportive parenting may benefit the development of stress regulation across early childhood and executive functions at preschool age.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.029
Threshold uncertainty score0.058

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.015
GPT teacher head0.264
Teacher spread0.249 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

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Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractno

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