Assessment of perinatal pathologies in premature neonates using a syllable discrimination task

In order to assess whether neonatal complications have any impact on early cognitive capacities, premature neonates between 35 and 36 weeks of gestation were tested in a syllable discrimination task using a non-nutritive sucking paradigm. The sucking response to a change of syllable was negatively correlated with the presence of brain lesions. In contrast to full-term and healthy premature neonates, who increase their sucking rates after a change of syllable, premature neonates with subcortical lesions react to a syllable change by exhibiting lower sucking rates relative to a no-change situation. This behavior may tentatively be related to a contingency learning deficit, secondary to subcortical lesions involving in particular the caudate nucleus.