Department of Biomedical Sciences, and Imaging, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA 90048, United States.
Department of Bioengineering, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Sep 26;33(19):10367-10379. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhad288.
Prior work has shown that different functional brain networks exhibit different maturation rates, but little is known about whether and how different brain areas may differ in the exact shape of longitudinal functional connectivity growth trajectories during infancy. We used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during natural sleep to characterize developmental trajectories of different regions using a longitudinal cohort of infants at 3 weeks (neonate), 1 year, and 2 years of age (n = 90; all with usable data at three time points). A novel whole brain heatmap analysis was performed with four mixed-effect models to determine the best fit of age-related changes for each functional connection: (i) growth effects: positive-linear-age, (ii) emergent effects: positive-log-age, (iii) pruning effects: negative-quadratic-age, and (iv) transient effects: positive-quadratic-age. Our results revealed that emergent (logarithmic) effects dominated developmental trajectory patterns, but significant pruning and transient effects were also observed, particularly in connections centered on inferior frontal and anterior cingulate areas that support social learning and conflict monitoring. Overall, unique global distribution patterns were observed for each growth model indicating that developmental trajectories for different connections are heterogeneous. All models showed significant effects concentrated in association areas, highlighting the dominance of higher-order social/cognitive development during the first 2 years of life.
先前的研究表明，不同的功能大脑网络表现出不同的成熟速度，但对于不同的大脑区域在婴儿期纵向功能连接生长轨迹的具体形状上是否存在差异以及如何存在差异，我们知之甚少。我们使用自然睡眠期间的静息态功能磁共振成像（fMRI），通过一个 3 周（新生儿）、1 岁和 2 岁（n=90；所有三个时间点都有可用数据）的婴儿纵向队列来描述不同区域的发育轨迹。使用四个混合效应模型进行了全新的全脑热图分析，以确定每个功能连接的年龄相关性变化的最佳拟合：（i）增长效应：正线性年龄，（ii）突发效应：正对数年龄，（iii）修剪效应：负二次年龄，和（iv）瞬态效应：正二次年龄。我们的研究结果表明，突发（对数）效应主导了发展轨迹模式，但也观察到显著的修剪和瞬态效应，特别是在以支持社会学习和冲突监测的下额叶和前扣带区域为中心的连接中。总的来说，每个增长模型都观察到了独特的全局分布模式，这表明不同连接的发展轨迹是异质的。所有模型都显示出显著的效应集中在联合区域，强调了在生命的头 2 年中，更高阶的社会/认知发展的主导地位。
