Towards Baby Brain Connectome: a Study of Newborn Brain Networks

描述（由申请人提供）：不断增长的早产发生率（美国每年50万美元）和出生伤害（美国每年2.5万美元）对社会产生了深远的影响，除了受影响家庭的身体和精神压力外，还需要数百万美元用于这些儿童的医疗保健和教育。我们非常需要早期发现和干预。磁共振成像为婴儿大脑的无创研究和监测提供了有力的工具。在过去的十年里，MRI的发展使得不仅可以可视化大体解剖特征，而且可以使用BOLD和微结构组织扩散等方法可视化大脑的功能方面。最近，后处理技术使这些技术进一步发展，以进一步研究大脑中尺度发育网络。这项生物工程研究基金的目标是研究新生儿大脑结构和功能连接网络的发展，从胎龄26周到1岁，并与临床结果相关。通过这样做，我们的目标是更好地了解人类大脑如何在正常和异常情况下塑造和重塑自身，并确定这些网络指标是否可以用作确定发育轨迹的早期生物标志物。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The growing incidence of preterm birth (>500,000/year in the US) and birth injuries (>25,000/year in the US) have had a profound impact on society, with millions of dollars devoted to the healthcare and education of these children in addition to the physical and emotional stress on the affected families. There is a tremendous need for early detection and intervention. Magnetic resonance imaging has provided a powerful tool for the noninvasive study and monitoring of the infant brain. Developments in MRI over the last decade have allowed visualization of not only gross anatomic features, but also functional aspects of the brain using methods such as BOLD and microstructural organization using diffusion. More recently, post-processing techniques have advanced these techniques to further the study of mesoscale developing networks in the brain. The goal of this Bioengineering Research Grant is to investigate the development of structural and functional connectivity networks in the newborn brain from 26 weeks of gestational age to 1 year of life and correlating with clinical outcome. By doing so, we aim to gain a better insight ino how the human brain shapes and reshapes itself in to normal and abnormal conditions and to determine whether these network metrics maybe used as an early biomarker for determining developmental trajectories.