FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Turku Brain and Mind Center, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Turku, Lemminkäisenkatu 3, 2nd floor, 20520, Turku, Finland.
Department of Child Psychiatry, University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland.
Brain Struct Funct. 2019 Jan;224(1):501-513. doi: 10.1007/s00429-018-1787-x. Epub 2018 Nov 2.
Information on normal brain structure and development facilitates the recognition of abnormal developmental trajectories and thus needs to be studied in more detail. We imaged 68 healthy infants aged 2-5 weeks with high-resolution structural MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) and investigated hemispheric asymmetry as well as the associations of various total and lobar brain volumes with infant age and sex. We found similar hemispheric asymmetry in both sexes, seen as larger volumes of the right temporal lobe, and of the left parietal and occipital lobes. The degree of asymmetry did not vary with age. Regardless of controlling for gestational age, gray and white matter had different age-related growth patterns. This is a reflection of gray matter growth being greater in the first years, while white matter growth extends into early adulthood. Sex-dependent differences were seen in gray matter as larger regional absolute volumes in males and as larger regional relative volumes in females. Our results are in line with previous studies and expand our understanding of infant brain development.
了解正常的大脑结构和发育有助于识别异常的发育轨迹，因此需要更详细地研究。我们使用高分辨率结构磁共振成像（MRI）对 68 名 2-5 周龄的健康婴儿进行了成像，并研究了半球不对称性以及各种总脑和脑叶体积与婴儿年龄和性别的关联。我们发现两性之间存在相似的半球不对称性，表现为右侧颞叶、左侧顶叶和枕叶的体积较大。不对称程度与年龄无关。无论是否控制胎龄，灰质和白质的生长模式都不同。这反映了灰质在前几年的生长速度更快，而白质的生长速度则延伸到成年早期。在灰质中观察到与性别相关的差异，男性的区域绝对体积较大，女性的区域相对体积较大。我们的研究结果与之前的研究一致，并扩展了我们对婴儿大脑发育的理解。
