Department of Radiology and Biomedical Research Imaging Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 130 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA.
Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 130 Mason Farm Rd, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599, USA.
Nat Commun. 2023 Jun 22;14(1):3727. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-38974-9.
Brain subcortical structures are paramount in many cognitive functions and their aberrations during infancy are predisposed to various neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders, making it highly essential to characterize the early subcortical normative growth patterns. This study investigates the volumetric development and surface area expansion of six subcortical structures and their associations with Mullen scales of early learning by leveraging 513 high-resolution longitudinal MRI scans within the first two postnatal years. Results show that (1) each subcortical structure (except for the amygdala with an approximately linear increase) undergoes rapid nonlinear volumetric growth after birth, which slows down at a structure-specific age with bilaterally similar developmental patterns; (2) Subcortical local area expansion reveals structure-specific and spatiotemporally heterogeneous patterns; (3) Positive associations between thalamus and both receptive and expressive languages and between caudate and putamen and fine motor are revealed. This study advances our understanding of the dynamic early subcortical developmental patterns.
脑皮质下结构在许多认知功能中至关重要，其在婴儿期的异常可能导致各种神经发育和神经精神障碍，因此准确描述早期皮质下的正常生长模式非常重要。本研究利用出生后两年内的 513 例高分辨率纵向 MRI 扫描，探讨了六种皮质下结构的体积发育和表面积扩张及其与穆伦早期学习量表的关系。结果表明：（1）除杏仁核呈近似线性增长外，每个皮质下结构（除杏仁核外）在出生后都经历了快速的非线性体积增长，随后在特定的年龄以双侧相似的发育模式减缓；（2）皮质下局部面积扩张呈现出特定结构和时空异质性的模式；（3）揭示了丘脑与接受性和表达性语言之间，尾状核和壳核与精细运动之间存在正相关关系。本研究增进了我们对动态早期皮质下发育模式的理解。
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