Department of Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States.
Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO 63110, United States.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Jul 24;33(15):9250-9262. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhad198.
The thalamus is a critical relay center for neural pathways involving sensory, motor, and cognitive functions, including cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical and cortico-ponto-cerebello-thalamo-cortical loops. Despite the importance of these circuits, their development has been understudied. One way to investigate these pathways in human development in vivo is with functional connectivity MRI, yet few studies have examined thalamo-cortical and cerebello-cortical functional connectivity in development. Here, we used resting-state functional connectivity to measure functional connectivity in the thalamus and cerebellum with previously defined cortical functional networks in 2 separate data sets of children (7-12 years old) and adults (19-40 years old). In both data sets, we found stronger functional connectivity between the ventral thalamus and the somatomotor face cortical functional network in children compared with adults, extending previous cortico-striatal functional connectivity findings. In addition, there was more cortical network integration (i.e. strongest functional connectivity with multiple networks) in the thalamus in children than in adults. We found no developmental differences in cerebello-cortical functional connectivity. Together, these results suggest different maturation patterns in cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical and cortico-ponto-cerebellar-thalamo-cortical pathways.
丘脑是涉及感觉、运动和认知功能的神经通路的关键中继中心,包括皮质-纹状体-丘脑-皮质和皮质-脑桥-小脑-丘脑-皮质环路。尽管这些回路非常重要,但它们的发育仍未得到充分研究。一种在体内研究人类发育过程中这些通路的方法是使用功能连接性 MRI,但很少有研究检查发育过程中的丘脑-皮质和小脑-皮质功能连接性。在这里,我们使用静息态功能连接性来测量两个独立的儿童(7-12 岁)和成人(19-40 岁)数据集的丘脑和小脑与先前定义的皮质功能网络之间的功能连接性。在两个数据集,我们发现与成年人相比,儿童的腹侧丘脑与躯体感觉面部皮质功能网络之间的功能连接性更强,扩展了先前的皮质-纹状体功能连接性发现。此外,儿童的丘脑与多个网络的功能连接性更强(即与多个网络的最强功能连接性)。我们没有发现小脑-皮质功能连接性的发育差异。总之,这些结果表明皮质-纹状体-丘脑-皮质和皮质-脑桥-小脑-丘脑-皮质通路存在不同的成熟模式。