Preterm birth can change an infant's brain activity while they are asleep and also affects future brain health, a study has found.

Researchers at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Australia analysed brain activity data collected from 94 infants from Helsinki in Finland.

The study group comprised 42 infants who had been born extremely premature at 27 weeks, and a control group of 52 infants who had been born at full term.

"Our study also indicated that the differences in neural sleep activity at 42 weeks could predict a child's ability to use visual information to solve problems at two years of age," Cocchi said.

He said that like other behaviours, good sleep relies upon the proper organisation of dynamic patterns of brain activity during different sleep states.

"These two stages are key components of a newborn's sleep-wake cycle, and gradually transform with age into cycles of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep states such as deep sleep," said Dr James Roberts, a co-author of the study and head of QIMR Berghofer's Brain Modelling Group.

"These two stages are key components of a newborn's sleep-wake cycle, and gradually transform with age into cycles of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep states such as deep sleep," he said.

"These tools have been previously used to describe complex systems such as the acoustics of musical instruments, but we've been able to adapt it to brain waves in sleeping babies," Roberts added.

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