A MRI Study of Visual and Motor Pathways in Premature Infants

Approximately 30,000 babies annually are born with extremely low birth weight (ELBW) in the
US. These babies often have motor and/or visual problems when they grow up. It is very
important to identify high risk ELBW infants as early as possible, so that the investigators
can treat them earlier to prevent poor development. Neurological examination at early age is
not good enough to identify high risk ELBW infants. One the other hand, some magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) methods such as diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and resting state
functional MRI (rfMRI) have shown great sensitivity to brain injury which may cause motor and
visual problems. Therefore, the investigators propose to use DTI and rfMRI on ELBW infants at
a very early age to predict long−term outcome and to identify infants who are at high risk of
having motor and/or visual problems when they grow up.