Disruption and Compensation of Sulcation-based Covariance Networks in Neonatal Brain Growth after Perinatal Injury

Abstract Perinatal brain injuries in preterm neonates are associated with alterations in structural neurodevelopment, leading to impaired cognition, motor coordination, and behavior. However, it remains unknown how such injuries affect postnatal cortical folding and structural covariance networks, w...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) N.Y. 1991), 2020-11, Vol.30 (12), p.6238-6253
Main Authors: Kim, Sharon Y, Liu, Mengting, Hong, Seok-Jun, Toga, Arthur W, Barkovich, A James, Xu, Duan, Kim, Hosung
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brain - growth & development
Brain - pathology
Brain Injuries - pathology
Female
Gestational Age
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Infant, Newborn
Infant, Premature
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Neural Pathways - growth & development
Neural Pathways - pathology
Original
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Summary:Abstract Perinatal brain injuries in preterm neonates are associated with alterations in structural neurodevelopment, leading to impaired cognition, motor coordination, and behavior. However, it remains unknown how such injuries affect postnatal cortical folding and structural covariance networks, which indicate functional parcellation and reciprocal brain connectivity. Studying 229 magnetic resonance scans from 158 preterm neonates (n = 158, mean age = 28.2), we found that severe injuries including intraventricular hemorrhage, periventricular leukomalacia, and ventriculomegaly lead to significantly reduced cortical folding and increased covariance (hyper-covariance) in only the early (35 weeks) of the third trimester. The aberrant hyper-covariance may drive acceleration of cortical folding as a compensatory mechanism to “catch-up” with normal development. By 40 weeks, preterm neonates with/without severe brain injuries exhibited no difference in cortical folding and covariance compared with healthy term neonates. However, graph theory-based analysis showed that even after recovery, severely injured brains exhibit a more segregated, less integrated, and overall inefficient network system with reduced integration strength in the dorsal attention, frontoparietal, limbic, and visual network systems. Ultimately, severe perinatal injuries cause network-level deviations that persist until the late stage of the third trimester and may contribute to neurofunctional impairment.
ISSN:1047-3211
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhaa181