Abstract
The electrical activity in the very early human preterm brain, as recorded by scalp EEG, is mostly discontinuous and has bursts of high-frequency oscillatory activity nested within slow-wave depolarisations of high amplitude. The temporal organisation of the occurrence of these EEG bursts has not been previously investigated. We analysed the distribution of the EEG bursts in 11 very preterm (23–30 weeks gestational age) human babies through two estimates of the Hurst exponent. We found long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs) in the occurrence of these EEG bursts demonstrating that even in the very immature human brain, when the cerebral cortical structure is far from fully developed, there is non-trivial temporal structuring of electrical activity.
Highlights
The EEG of very preterm babies is discontinuous, with high amplitude bursts of EEG activity interspersed within long periods of very low background activity [1]
The presence of long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs) in the occurrence of BNO events was assessed through two estimations of the Hurst exponent of the IEI sequences
These findings provide, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of LRTCs in the temporal sequence of bursts of highfrequency oscillations nested within large slow-wave depolarisations, in the preterm human brain
Summary
The EEG of very preterm babies is discontinuous, with high amplitude bursts of EEG activity interspersed within long periods of very low background activity [1]. A power-law decay indicates complex temporal structure in the occurrence of events such that: (a) correlations between distant events exist and extend over longer time scales than random or short-range correlated activity (where event timing is correlated only to neighbouring previous events); and (b) the magnitude of these correlations has no distinct scale. These long-range temporal correlations (LRTCs) are characterised using estimates of the Hurst exponent [11] and it has been suggested that they reflect a complex organisational state of the brain [5]. These findings led us to the question of how early in human brain development can an EEG signature of such complex organisation be observed?
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