Dataset Information

Functional Brain Parcellations of the Infant Brain and the Associated Developmental Trends.

ABSTRACT: Resting-state functional connectivity studies have dramatically improved our understanding of the early human brain functional development during the past decade. However, one emerging problem that could potentially impede future progresses in the field is the definition of regions of interest (ROI), since it is well known that functional connectivity estimation can be seriously contaminated by within-ROI signal heterogeneity. In this study, based on a large-scale rsfMRI data set in human infants (230 neonates, 143 1-year olds, and 107 2-year olds), we aimed to derive a set of anatomically constrained, infant-specific functional brain parcellations using functional connectivity-based clustering. Our results revealed significantly higher levels of signal homogeneity within the newly defined functional parcellations compared with other schemes. Importantly, the global functional connectivity patterns associated with the newly defined functional subunits demonstrated significantly increasing levels of differentiation with age, confirming increasing levels of local specialization. Subsequent whole brain connectivity analysis revealed intriguing patterns of regional-level functional connectivity developments and system-level hub redistribution during infancy. Overall, the newly derived infant-specific functional brain parcellations and the associated novel developmental patterns will likely prove valuable for future early developmental studies using the functional connectivity technique.

SUBMITTER: Shi F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6059094 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Functional Brain Parcellations of the Infant Brain and the Associated Developmental Trends.

Shi Feng F Salzwedel Andrew P AP Lin Weili W Gilmore John H JH Gao Wei W

Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) 20180401 4

Resting-state functional connectivity studies have dramatically improved our understanding of the early human brain functional development during the past decade. However, one emerging problem that could potentially impede future progresses in the field is the definition of regions of interest (ROI), since it is well known that functional connectivity estimation can be seriously contaminated by within-ROI signal heterogeneity. In this study, based on a large-scale rsfMRI data set in human infant ...[more]

PMID: 28334317

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Project description:Many neuroscientific reports reference discrete macro-anatomical regions of the brain which were delineated according to a brain atlas or parcellation protocol. Currently, however, no widely accepted standards exist for partitioning the cortex and subcortical structures, or for assigning labels to the resulting regions, and many procedures are being actively used. Previous attempts to reconcile neuroanatomical nomenclatures have been largely qualitative, focusing on the development of thesauri or simple semantic mappings between terms. Here we take a fundamentally different approach, discounting the names of regions and instead comparing their definitions as spatial entities in an effort to provide more precise quantitative mappings between anatomical entities as defined by different atlases. We develop an analytical framework for studying this brain atlas concordance problem, and apply these methods in a comparison of eight diverse labeling methods used by the neuroimaging community. These analyses result in conditional probabilities that enable mapping between regions across atlases, which also form the input to graph-based methods for extracting higher-order relationships between sets of regions and to procedures for assessing the global similarity between different parcellations of the same brain. At a global scale, the overall results demonstrate a considerable lack of concordance between available parcellation schemes, falling within chance levels for some atlas pairs. At a finer level, this study reveals spatial relationships between sets of defined regions that are not obviously apparent; these are of high potential interest to researchers faced with the challenge of comparing results that were based on these different anatomical models, particularly when coordinate-based data are not available. The complexity of the spatial overlap patterns revealed points to problems for attempts to reconcile anatomical parcellations and nomenclatures using strictly qualitative and/or categorical methods. Detailed results from this study are made available via an interactive web site at http://obart.info.

Project description:Previous studies have shown that functional networks are present at birth and change dynamically throughout infancy and early childhood. However, the status of functional connectivity is still poorly understood in patients with infantile esotropia (IE). The aim of this study is to investigate the developmental trends of functional connectivity in patients with IE during a critical period of growth and development. A total of 17 patients with IE (9 males and 8 females; mean age: 3.36 ± 2.03 years, age range: 0.67–6.36 years) and 20 healthy subjects matched for age and gender were recruited and underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging. The whole-brain functional network connectivity was analyzed for the IE group and healthy control group. A general linear model was applied to assess the group-age interaction in terms of the functional connectivity. The discrepancy between the two groups in functional connectivity trajectories was also quantified across age and exhibited by the quadratic parabolic model. There were significant group-age interactions between the visual network and the default mode network, the visual network and the sensorimotor network, the limbic network and the default mode network, and within the limbic network in the functional connectivity. A U-shaped tendency across age, with an “inflection point” ranging from 3.1 to 4.0 years of age was exhibited in the difference between functional connectivity trajectories of the IE patients and normal controls. Abnormality in functional network connectivity could present in IE patients at birth, exhibiting aberrant developmental patterns over time. An abnormal functional network could reduce the ability of the cortex in visual information processing, further reactivating the subcortical visual information processing system, which is probably the pathogenesis of IE. Three to four years after birth is the critical time window for children with IE to establish normal network connections in the brain. Early surgery during this period may be helpful for affected children to have an opportunity to approach the normal development trajectory as early as possible.

Dataset Information

Functional Brain Parcellations of the Infant Brain and the Associated Developmental Trends.

Publications

Functional Brain Parcellations of the Infant Brain and the Associated Developmental Trends.

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