Tikoo Sankalp, Hernandez-Castillo Carlos R, Chen Haitao, Stephens Rebecca, Cornea Emil, Gilmore John H, Gao Wei
Department of Biomedical Sciences and Imaging, Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, California 90048.
Faculty of Computer Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada.
J Neurosci. 2025 Mar 12;45(11):e1209242025. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1209-24.2025.
The conventional understanding of the cerebellum as a sole movement control center has become obsolete, given its role in various higher-order functions, including cognition, emotion, and social processing. As these functions emerge during infancy, it is logical to assume that the cerebellum's functional organization evolve in tandem or preemptively to underpin these functions. However, the longitudinal development of the cerebellum's functional architecture during the crucial early years of infant life remains largely unexplored, highlighting a significant research gap. In this study, leveraging a large cohort of both male and female full-term (FT; = 155) and preterm (PT; = 67) infants, we aimed to delineate the development of within-cerebellum and cerebello-cortical functional connections during the first 2 years of life. Our findings highlight comprehensive functional synchronization within the neonatal cerebellum with a striking cortical projection focus on primary sensorimotor and visual cortices. While the within-cerebellum synchronization demonstrated early emergence in neonates and developmental stability during the initial 2 years, the cerebello-cortical projection patterns evolved dramatically, marked by specialization, shifting, and higher-order cortex integration, providing exciting evidence of the cerebellum's potential involvement in higher-order functions from infancy. Furthermore, PT infants exhibited decreased cerebello-cortical connectivity compared with their FT counterparts, suggesting potential developmental alterations. These findings collectively illustrate a dynamic growth pattern of cerebellar functional organization marked by both within-cerebellum stability and cerebello-cortical projection plasticity with significant implications for long-term cognitive and socioemotional development.
鉴于小脑在包括认知、情感和社会处理等各种高阶功能中所起的作用，传统上将小脑仅视为运动控制中心的理解已过时。由于这些功能在婴儿期出现，因此可以合理推测，小脑的功能组织会同步或先于这些功能发展，以支持这些功能。然而，在婴儿生命的关键早期，小脑功能结构的纵向发育在很大程度上仍未得到探索，这凸显了一个重大的研究空白。在本研究中，我们利用一大群足月（FT；n = 155）和早产（PT；n = 67）的男婴和女婴，旨在描绘生命最初两年内小脑内部以及小脑 - 皮质功能连接的发育情况。我们的研究结果突出了新生儿小脑中全面的功能同步，其显著的皮质投射集中在主要感觉运动和视觉皮质。虽然小脑内部的同步在新生儿期就已早期出现，并在最初两年保持发育稳定，但小脑 - 皮质投射模式却发生了显著变化，其特点是专业化、转移和高阶皮质整合，这为小脑从婴儿期就可能参与高阶功能提供了令人兴奋的证据。此外，与足月婴儿相比，早产婴儿的小脑 - 皮质连接性降低，这表明可能存在发育改变。这些发现共同说明了小脑功能组织的动态生长模式，其特点是小脑内部稳定和小脑 - 皮质投射可塑性，这对长期认知和社会情感发展具有重要意义。
