Huang Qi, Zhang Jian, Zhang Tianhao, Wang Hui, Yan Jianhua
PET Center, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200235, China.
Beijing Engineering Research Center of Radiographic Techniques and Equipment, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China.
Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2020 Feb;47(2):235-246. doi: 10.1007/s00259-019-04508-z. Epub 2019 Sep 13.
The human brain develops rapidly from infant to adolescent. Establishment of the brain developmental trajectory is important to understand cognition, behavior, and emotions, as well to evaluate the risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. F-FDG PET has been widely used to study brain glucose metabolism, but functional brain segregation and integration based on F-FDG PET remains largely unknown.
Two hundred one Chinese child patients with extracranial malignancy were retrospectively enrolled as surrogates to healthy children. All images were spatially normalized into MNI space using pediatric brain template, and the 18F-FDG uptakes were calculated for 90 regions using AAL atlas. The group-level metabolic brain network was constructed by measuring Pearson correlation coefficients between each pair of brain regions in an inter-subject manner for infant (1 to 4 years), childhood (5 to 8 years), early adolescent (9 to 12 years), and adolescent (13 to 18 years) group, respectively. Global efficiency of each group was calculated, and the modular architectures were detected by a greedy algorithm.
Both metabolic brain network connectivity and global efficiency increased with aging. Brain network was grouped into 4, 6, 4, and 4 modules from infant to adolescent, respectively. The modular architecture dramatically reorganized from childhood to early adolescent. The hubs spatiotemporally rewired. The ratio of the connector hub to the provincial hub increased from infant to early adolescent, but decreased during the adolescent period.
The topological properties and modular reorganization of human brain network dramatically changed with age, especially from childhood to early adolescence. These findings would help understand the Chinese developmental trajectory of human brain functional integration and segregation.
人类大脑从婴儿期到青少年期迅速发育。建立大脑发育轨迹对于理解认知、行为和情绪以及评估神经精神疾病风险至关重要。F-FDG PET已被广泛用于研究大脑葡萄糖代谢，但基于F-FDG PET的大脑功能分离和整合在很大程度上仍不清楚。
回顾性纳入201例中国颅外恶性肿瘤儿童患者作为健康儿童的替代者。所有图像使用儿科脑模板在空间上归一化为MNI空间，并使用AAL图谱计算90个区域的18F-FDG摄取量。通过以受试者间的方式测量婴儿组（1至4岁）、儿童组（5至8岁）、青少年早期组（9至12岁）和青少年组（13至18岁）中每对脑区之间的皮尔逊相关系数，构建组水平的代谢脑网络。计算每组的全局效率，并通过贪婪算法检测模块架构。
代谢脑网络连通性和全局效率均随年龄增长而增加。从婴儿期到青少年期，脑网络分别被分为4、6、4和4个模块。模块架构从儿童期到青少年早期发生了显著重组。枢纽在时空上重新布线。连接枢纽与省域枢纽的比例从婴儿期到青少年早期增加，但在青少年期下降。
人类脑网络的拓扑特性和模块重组随年龄显著变化，尤其是从儿童期到青少年早期。这些发现将有助于理解中国人脑功能整合和分离的发育轨迹。
