The development of multisensory processing in term-born and preterm infancy

This project will open a window onto the development of multisensory processing in brain and behaviour in human infancy. It will also galvanise these fundamental discoveries to inform translation by showing how preterm birth shapes the development of multisensory processing, and how multisensory processing differences in infancy affect mental health outcomes. While we know that even the youngest babies are sensitive to aspects of their multisensory environments,1–4 research shows us very little about how infants process and perceive the multisensory world. For instance, although evidence indicates that young infants notice when sights, sounds and touches occur in the same or different places,5–7 we remain largely ignorant about when and how infants come to bind stimuli in these sense modalities into integrated multisensory objects or events.8–10 We also know little about the development of an ability to perceptually segregate sensations which originate from separate places or events. Put another way, it is unclear when and how infants come to sense a world of objects rather than a collection of correlated sensations. This project will build on recent methodological advances by the applicants11 including exciting new pilot data, to shed much needed light onto the developmental origins of multisensory integration and segregation (“multisensory processing”). The applicants will deploy an innovative combination of lab-based and online experimental methods in cross-sectional and longitudinal designs to trace the development of multisensory processing in infancy. They will also build a framework within which fundamental discoveries about infant multisensory development are translated to inform understanding of early differences in multisensory processing and their role in mental health outcomes, specifically in children born preterm. One in 13 births in the UK are preterm (born <37 weeks’ gestation), and individuals born preterm are more likely to be diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental condition and experience poorer educational and mental health outcomes.12–14 Preterm infants have very different sensory and multisensory experiences due to their early exposure to the extrauterine sensory environment, and they show resulting differences in brain structure and function.15 This project will uncover the nature of differences in multisensory processing between term-born and preterm infants. It will also investigate longitudinal relationships between multisensory processing in the first year and mental health at 2 years of age across both preterm and term-born groups. This objective is particularly timely given rapidly growing evidence that sensory and multisensory processing differences play a role in mental health outcomes across neurotypical and neurodivergent individuals.12,16–19 The project team is a uniquely qualified interdisciplinary group of scientists with expertise in multisensory development and neurodiversity (Andrew Bremner and Andrew Surtees, Birmingham BabyLab, Centre for Developmental Science, University of Birmingham), multisensory psychophysics and neurodiversity (Monica Gori, Unit for Visually Impaired People, Italian Institute of Technology, Genova), and perinatal developmental neuroscience and preterm birth (Tomoki Arichi, Centre for the Developing Brain, Department of Perinatal Imaging and Health, Kings College London, and Lorenzo Fabrizi, University College London). The project will also benefit from expert input from Gemma Holder (consultant neonatologist, Birmingham Women’s Hospital), and a steering group of experts-by-experience (parents of infants, individuals born preterm, and parents of infants born preterm). Furthermore, by recruiting and supporting talented predoctoral and postdoctoral researchers, it will create the platform for further research capacity at this crucial frontier of discovery and translational science.