Spontaneous activation of cortical somatosensory networks depresses their excitability in preterm human neonates.

Overview

1. Research Division of Digital Health and Applied Technology Assessment (DHATA), King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
2. Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology, University College London, London, United Kingdom
3. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Obstetric Wing, University College London Hospitals, London, United Kingdom
4. Department of Mathematics, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

Abstract

The cortical activity of preterm human infants is highly discontinuous, comprising transient high-amplitude bursts separated by periods of relative quiescence. While the functional significance of these bursts is well established, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. This burst–quiescence pattern could arise from a transient refractoriness within excitatory recurrent cortical networks following spontaneous activation. To assess this possibility, we tested whether such activation is followed by a transient reduction in excitability by evaluating whether externally evoked tactile responses are attenuated when somatosensory circuits have recently been active. We recorded electroencephalographic (EEG) responses to tactile stimulation of hands and feet in 35 preterm infants (40% female), with a median postmenstrual age of 32 weeks. This stimulation elicited wideband increases in EEG power, showing two distinct peaks: one in the delta range (1 Hz) and another in the alpha-beta range (~13 Hz). Low-frequency activity showed a single, broadly distributed peak across the scalp, whereas faster high beta–gamma responses were more confined to somatotopically specific regions, suggesting engagement of both widespread (tangential) and localized (columnar) cortical circuits. Importantly, the magnitude of the evoked response was significantly reduced when the activity immediately preceding stimulation resembled the spectro-spatial pattern of the somatosensory evoked response, indicating prior spontaneous activation of the somatosensory network. Stimulus-evoked EEG power changes decreased by 3.2 and 2.5 dB following hand and foot stimulation, respectively, for every 1.0-degree increase in the similarity between pre-stimulus activity and the spectro-spatial pattern of the somatosensory evoked response (scale 0–5). This effect was the strongest and most temporally sustained at slower frequencies. These results suggest that when somatosensory networks are spontaneously active, they become temporarily less responsive to stimulation—a form of refractoriness—preventing immediate reactivation. The extent of this refractory-like modulation is not uniform but depends on the spatial scale of the underlying networks, as indexed by their dominant frequency of activation. This mechanism may explain the cyclical pattern of bursting and quiescence neural activity observed in the preterm brain.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• osf:mw35y, at OSF; found in the references

Data and Code Availability

The data and its analysis code are open-access: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/MW35Y (Whitehead & Fabrizi, 2026).

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

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Version 3, 28 September 2026

• Authors: added Lorenzo Fabrizi (0000-0002-9582-0727); removed Lorenzo Fabrizi

Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, pages, dates, 5 authors, 6 keywords, 2 funders, 62 references.

Cite

This paper

Whitehead, K., Laudiano-Dray, M. P., Meek, J., Olhede, S., & Fabrizi, L. (2026). Spontaneous activation of cortical somatosensory networks depresses their excitability in preterm human neonates. Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.), 4, IMAG.a.1324. https://doi.org/10.1162/imag.a.1324

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