Visual pathways functioning in healthy pre-term adolescents: Sex but not gestational age effect

Abstract

Visuo-spatial and visuo-perceptual functioning is widely studied in preterm child and is strongly sex-specific. However, little to no data is available regarding male-female differences in preterm children and adolescents and about the interaction effect between sex and preterm birth. We studied 30 adolescents born preterm with normal cognitive and clinical neurological outcomes and 34 age-matched controls to investigate the interaction between levels of prematurity and sex in predicting the outcome of visual pathways functioning and to explore the relation between psychophysiological perceptive processing and neuropsychological performance. In the presence of prematurity, a greater female vulnerability in central visuo-cognitive processing (Form Coherence Task), but not in neuropsychological accuracy (Street Completion Test and Visual Object and Space Perception battery), seems to be more evident. Moreover, the psychophysical threshold is correlated to neuropsychological accuracy only in preterm females and not in males. These results support the idea that the male vulnerability in cognitive functioning described in prematurity-related developmental conditions is negligible during school age in children-adolescents with normal cognitive and clinical neurological outcomes.