Premature

Exploring the relationship between maternal prenatal stress and brain structure in premature neonates

BACKGROUND: Exposure to maternal stress in utero is associated with a range of adverse outcomes. We previously observed an association between maternal stress and white matter microstructure in a sample of infants born prematurely. In this study, we …

Phenotyping the Preterm Brain: Characterizing Individual Deviations From Normative Volumetric Development in Two Large Infant Cohorts

The diverse cerebral consequences of preterm birth create significant challenges for understanding pathogenesis or predicting later outcome. Instead of focusing on describing effects common to the group, comparing individual infants against robust …

Preterm birth alters the development of cortical microstructure and morphology at term-equivalent age

INTRODUCTION: The dynamic nature and complexity of the cellular events that take place during the last trimester of pregnancy make the developing cortex particularly vulnerable to perturbations. Abrupt interruption to normal gestation can lead to …

Heterogeneity in Brain Microstructural Development Following Preterm Birth

Preterm-born children are at increased risk of lifelong neurodevelopmental difficulties. Group-wise analyses of magnetic resonance imaging show many differences between preterm- and term-born infants but do not reliably predict neurocognitive …

Parental age effects on neonatal white matter development

OBJECTIVE: Advanced paternal age is associated with poor offspring developmental outcome. Though an increase in paternal age-related germline mutations may affect offspring white matter development, outcome differences could also be due to …

Different patterns of cortical maturation before and after 38 weeks gestational age demonstrated by diffusion MRI in vivo

Human cortical development during the third trimester is characterised by macro- and microstructural changes which are reflected in alterations in diffusion MRI (dMRI) measures, with significant decreases in cortical mean diffusivity (MD) and …

Annual Research Review: Not just a small adult brain: understanding later neurodevelopment through imaging the neonatal brain

BACKGROUND: There has been a recent proliferation in neuroimaging research focusing on brain development in the prenatal, neonatal and very early childhood brain. Early brain injury and preterm birth are associated with increased risk of …

Recent advances in diffusion neuroimaging: applications in the developing preterm brain

Measures obtained from diffusion-weighted imaging provide objective indices of white matter development and injury in the developing preterm brain. To date, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been used widely, highlighting differences in fractional …

Early development of structural networks and the impact of prematurity on brain connectivity

Preterm infants are at high risk of neurodevelopmental impairment, which may be due to altered development of brain connectivity. We aimed to (i) assess structural brain development from 25 to 45 weeks gestational age (GA) using graph theoretical …

Language ability in preterm children is associated with arcuate fasciculi microstructure at term

In the mature human brain, the arcuate fasciculus mediates verbal working memory, word learning, and sublexical speech repetition. However, its contribution to early language acquisition remains unclear. In this work, we aimed to evaluate the role of …