Kim Jung-Hoon, Kapse Kushal, Limperopoulos Catherine, De Asis-Cruz Josepheen
Developing Brain Institute, Children's National Hospital, Washington, DC, United States.
Front Neurosci. 2024 May 1;18:1294527. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1294527. eCollection 2024.
Over the past decade, a growing body of research in adults has emphasized the role of the cerebellum in social and emotional cognition. This has been further supported by findings of delayed social and emotional development in toddlers with cerebellar injury during the fetal and newborn periods. However, the contributions of the cerebellum to social-emotional development in typically developing newborns are unclear. To bridge this gap in knowledge, we used multimodal MRI to investigate associations between cerebellar structure and function in 88 healthy neonates (mean ± sd of postmenstrual age, = 42.00 ± 1.91 weeks) and social-emotional development at 18-months assessed using the Infant-Toddler Social-Emotional Assessment (ITSEA) (mean age on ITSEA: 18.32 ± 1.19 months old). We found that cerebellar volume was not associated with ITSEA domain scores at 18 months. We further demonstrated cerebellar functional gradient (FGR) defined using principal component analysis (PCA) was associated with Externalizing domain (linear regression model, false-discovery-rate-adjusted = 0.013). This cluster (FGR7) included the left dentate, right VI, left Vermis VIIIb, and right V lobules. Finally, we demonstrated that either structural or functional features of the cerebellum reliably predicted scores on the Externalizing and Internalizing domains (correlation between actual and predicted scores: for structural, Fisher's = 0.48 ± 0.01 for Internalizing, = 0.01; for functional, Fisher's = 0.45 ± 0.01 for Externalizing, = 0.02; with permutation test). Collectively, our findings suggest that the cerebellum plays an important role in social-emotional development during the critical early stages of life.
在过去十年中，针对成年人的越来越多的研究强调了小脑在社会和情感认知中的作用。胎儿期和新生儿期小脑受伤的幼儿出现社会和情感发育延迟的研究结果进一步支持了这一点。然而，小脑对正常发育的新生儿社会情感发育的贡献尚不清楚。为了填补这一知识空白，我们使用多模态磁共振成像（MRI）研究了88名健康新生儿（月经龄的平均值±标准差，=42.00±1.91周）的小脑结构和功能与18个月时使用婴幼儿社会情感评估（ITSEA）评估的社会情感发育之间的关联（ITSEA的平均年龄：18.32±1.19个月）。我们发现，18个月时小脑体积与ITSEA领域得分无关。我们进一步证明，使用主成分分析（PCA）定义的小脑功能梯度（FGR）与外化领域相关（线性回归模型，错误发现率调整后=0.013）。这个簇（FGR7）包括左侧齿状核、右侧VI、左侧小脑蚓部VIIIb和右侧V小叶。最后，我们证明，小脑的结构或功能特征都能可靠地预测外化和内化领域的得分（实际得分与预测得分之间的相关性：对于结构，内化领域的费舍尔氏=0.48±0.01，=0.01；对于功能，外化领域的费舍尔氏=0.45±0.01，=0.02；采用置换检验）。总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，小脑在生命关键的早期阶段的社会情感发育中起着重要作用。
