Increased survival of extremely low birth weight infants has led to a need for new prognostic
methods to predict possible future neurological impairment. We investigated the early
development of the somatosensory system by recording the somatosensory evoked
magnetic fields (SEFs) during natural sleep at fullterm age in 16 very prematurely born
infants and 16 healthy newborns born at term. The purpose was to determine possible
changes in the function of the somatosensory cortex in the prematurely born infants by …