Moser Julia, Nelson Steven M, Koirala Sanju, Madison Thomas J, Labonte Alyssa K, Carrasco Cristian Morales, Feczko Eric, Moore Lucille A, Lundquist Jacob T, Weldon Kimberly B, Grimsrud Gracie, Hufnagle Kristina, Ahmed Weli, Myers Michael J, Adeyemo Babatunde, Snyder Abraham Z, Gordon Evan M, Dosenbach Nico U F, Tervo-Clemmens Brenden, Larsen Bart, Moeller Steen, Yacoub Essa, Vizioli Luca, Uğurbil Kamil, Laumann Timothy O, Sylvester Chad M, Fair Damien A
Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States.
Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States.
Imaging Neurosci (Camb). 2025 Jan 9;3. doi: 10.1162/imag_a_00426. eCollection 2025.
The characterization of individual functional brain organization with Precision Functional Mapping has provided important insights in recent years in adults. However, little is known about the ontogeny of inter-individual differences in brain functional organization during human development. Precise characterization of systems organization during periods of high plasticity is likely to be essential for discoveries promoting lifelong health. Obtaining precision functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data during development has unique challenges that highlight the importance of establishing new methods to improve data acquisition, processing, and analysis. Here, we investigate two methods that can facilitate attaining this goal: multi-echo (ME) data acquisition and thermal noise removal with Noise Reduction with Distribution Corrected (NORDIC) principal component analysis. We applied these methods to precision fMRI data from adults, children, and newborn infants. In adults, both ME acquisitions and NORDIC increased temporal signal to noise ratio (tSNR) as well as the split-half reliability of functional connectivity matrices, with the combination helping more than either technique alone. The benefits of NORDIC denoising replicated in both our developmental samples. ME acquisitions revealed longer and more variable T2* relaxation times across the brain in infants relative to older children and adults, leading to major differences in the echo weighting for optimally combining ME data. This result suggests ME acquisitions may be a promising tool for optimizing developmental fMRI, albeit application in infants needs further investigation. The present work showcases methodological advances that improve Precision Functional Mapping in adults and developmental populations and, at the same time, highlights the need for further improvements in infant-specific fMRI.
近年来，利用精准功能图谱对个体功能性脑组织结构进行表征，已为成人研究提供了重要见解。然而，对于人类发育过程中脑功能组织个体间差异的个体发生学，我们知之甚少。在高可塑性时期对系统组织进行精确表征，可能对于促进终身健康的发现至关重要。在发育过程中获取精准功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据面临独特挑战，这凸显了建立新方法以改善数据采集、处理和分析的重要性。在此，我们研究了两种有助于实现这一目标的方法：多回波（ME）数据采集和采用分布校正降噪（NORDIC）主成分分析的热噪声去除。我们将这些方法应用于成人、儿童和新生儿的精准fMRI数据。在成人中，ME采集和NORDIC都提高了时间信噪比（tSNR）以及功能连接矩阵的分半可靠性，两者结合的效果优于单独使用任何一种技术。NORDIC去噪的益处也在我们的两个发育样本中得到了验证。ME采集显示，相对于大龄儿童和成人，婴儿全脑的T2*弛豫时间更长且更具变异性，这导致在优化合并ME数据时回波加权存在重大差异。这一结果表明，ME采集可能是优化发育fMRI的一种有前景的工具，尽管在婴儿中的应用还需要进一步研究。本研究展示了在成人和发育人群中改进精准功能图谱的方法学进展，同时也凸显了在婴儿特异性fMRI方面进一步改进的必要性。
