Recent research in identification of brain injury after trauma shows many possible blood biomarkers that may help identify the fetus and neonate with encephalopathy. Traumatic brain injury shares many common features with perinatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. Trauma has a hypoxic component, and one of the 1st physiologic consequences of moderate-severe traumatic brain injury is apnea. Trau...

The fetal brain is thought to have a role in the onset and progression of labor. Evidence also exists for fetal oxytocin release just before and during parturition. The present study examined whether activation of the fetal brain could induce uterine myometrial contractions through oxytocin receptors in the dam. Under urethane anesthesia, electrical stimulation of the hypothalamus of fetal rats...

Recent studies measuring fetal cerebral oxygen and glucose uptake in sheep indicate that the requirements of the fetal brain are comparable to those of the adult (Makowski, Schneider, Tsoulos, Colwill, Battaglia & Meschia, 1972). Since oxygen and glucose contents of arterial blood perfusing the fetal head are considerably less than in the adult animal, there would appear to be a low margin of s...

The development of a technique for the recording of fetal brain activity has been highly limited by the inaccessibility of the developing human brain in utero. Based on the needs of resolution and a noninvasive nature, only biomagnetic measurements are suitable for the determination of the integrity of the fetal brain on a routine basis. We have built a new biomagnetic measurement device dedica...