fMRI of Brain Development in Newborn Infants

描述(由申请人提供) 功能磁共振成像(FMRI)已被成功地应用于 成人和年龄较大的儿童的脑功能的非侵入性标测，以及 检测对各种感官刺激的反应的激活。总目标 这项儿童脑疾病探索性拨款提案的目的是开发 并评价功能磁共振成像检测神经元对感官反应的激活 未用镇静剂的足月儿和早产儿的刺激。脑功能磁共振成像的研究 婴儿对感觉刺激的反应很少见，而且 这项技术监测发育过程中成熟变化的能力 大脑在很大程度上仍未被开发。 我们的具体目标是[i]利用回波平面大脑成像来 展示功能磁共振成像在非镇静状态下检测皮质激活的能力 足月儿和早产儿对视觉和听觉刺激的反应； 演示FMR1监控响应中随时间变化的能力 27名婴儿听觉和视觉皮质区域对感觉刺激的反应 至经后52周，并确定是否存在可检测到的FMR1 足月和早产受试者之间的差异；以及[3]以演示 功能磁共振成像检测特定反应产生的大脑活动的能力 语言符号，从而评估语言的发展 发育中的新生儿大脑中的专业化。以之前的工作为指导 对婴儿的非成像研究，我们建议证明大脑皮层区域 与非镇静剂患者大脑中已经存在的语言能力有关 足月新生儿。 总体而言，这些研究将确立使用功能磁共振成像作为一种重要的 了解新生儿局部脑功能发育的工具 婴儿，非侵入性，没有镇静剂。我们小组有学习的经验 损伤对大脑发育的影响，并利用这项新技术， 我们的长期目标是检测大脑中的功能差异 足月儿和极低出生体重早产儿的发育。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant) Functional MRI (fMRI) has been used with considerable success for the non-invasive mapping of cerebral function in adults and older children, and for detecting activation in response to various sensory stimuli. The overall goal of this Exploratory Grant in Pediatric Brain Disorders proposal is to develop and evaluate fMRI for detecting neuronal activation in response to sensory stimuli in non-sedated term and preterm infants. fMRI studies of cerebral activation in response to sensory stimulation in infants are rare, and the ability of this technique to monitor maturational changes in the developing brain remains largely unexplored. Our specific aims are [I] to utilize echo-planar cerebral imaging to demonstrate the ability of fMRI to detect cortical activation in non-sedated term and preterm infants in response to visual and auditory stimuli; [2] to demonstrate the ability of fMR1 to monitor changes over time in the responses of the auditory and visual cortical regions to sensory stimuli in infants of 27 to 52 weeks postmenstrual age and to determine if there are detectable fMR1 differences between the term and preterm subjects; and [3] to demonstrate the ability of fMRI to detect cerebral activity produced specifically in response to language tokens, and thereby to assess the development of language specialization within the developing newborn brain. Guided by prior work with nonimaging studies of infants, we propose to demonstrate that cortical regions relating to linguistic abilities already exist in the brains of non-sedated term neonates. Overall, these studies will establish the utility of using fMRI as an important tool for understanding the development of regional brain function in newborn infants, non-invasively and without sedation. Our group has experience studying the impact of injury on developing brain, and utilizing this novel technology, our long term goal is to detect functional differences in the cerebral development of term and very low birth weight preterm infants.