Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute for Child and Family Development, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, USA.
Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI 48202, USA.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jan 9;7:39286. doi: 10.1038/srep39286.
It has been suggested that neurological problems more frequent in those born preterm are expressed prior to birth, but owing to technical limitations, this has been difficult to test in humans. We applied novel fetal resting-state functional MRI to measure brain function in 32 human fetuses in utero and found that systems-level neural functional connectivity was diminished in fetuses that would subsequently be born preterm. Neural connectivity was reduced in a left-hemisphere pre-language region, and the degree to which connectivity of this left language region extended to right-hemisphere homologs was positively associated with the time elapsed between fMRI assessment and delivery. These results provide the first evidence that altered functional connectivity in the preterm brain is identifiable before birth. They suggest that neurodevelopmental disorders associated with preterm birth may result from neurological insults that begin in utero.
有人认为，早产儿更容易出现的神经问题在出生前就已经表现出来，但由于技术限制，这在人类身上很难进行测试。我们应用新型的胎儿静息态功能磁共振成像来测量 32 名宫内胎儿的大脑功能，发现随后早产的胎儿系统水平的神经功能连接减少。左侧语言前区域的神经连接减少，并且该左侧语言区域的连接程度与 fMRI 评估和分娩之间的时间间隔呈正相关。这些结果首次提供了证据，表明早产婴儿大脑的功能连接改变在出生前就可以识别。它们表明，与早产相关的神经发育障碍可能是由于宫内的神经损伤引起的。
