How Does the Functional Organization of the Human Brain Arise in Development?

最近20年的脑成像研究首次揭示了大脑皮层的功能组织。 人类大脑的细节我们现在知道了大脑中许多区域的功能和位置， 20年前认识的。这些区域中的许多都涉及认知的非常具体的组成部分，例如 颜色和运动的视觉感知，面部，地点和身体的视觉识别，甚至高水平的视觉识别。 心理过程，如理解句子的含义或思考另一个人是什么 思维然而，这幅诱人的人类大脑和思维新地图提出了一个紧迫的、悬而未决的问题： 所有这些精确的功能组织是如何在婴儿期和儿童期形成的？何时以及如何 每一小块皮层都有其独特的成年功能是特定皮层区域的功能 是由该区域与大脑其他部分的预先存在的连通性决定的？大脑皮层有多可塑 在早期脑损伤的情况下，？为了回答这些问题，我们将进行广泛的， 从出生到5岁儿童的纵向解剖和功能扫描。这项工作不是 直到现在才有可能，因为它需要几个非常新的技术进步，包括新的"连接体"。 MGH的扫描仪提供了世界上任何扫描仪的人脑分辨率连接图， 新生儿解剖成像、幼儿功能成像和纵向成像的新方法 同一个人从出生到成年的大脑图像的登记。这些方法将使我们能够测试 在4 - 8岁时进行扫描时，是否可以从大脑皮层中预测每个功能区域的位置， 出生时同一区域的独特连接性（在不同年龄的受试者中登记）。通过进一步包括 对于围产期中风的儿童，我们可以测试特定皮质区域的可塑性，而不是白色物质 这些区域的联系，在成人功能组织的最终发展。这项工作将 回答了人类大脑在婴儿期和儿童期是如何连接起来的基本问题， 考虑到神经发育障碍的高患病率， 发展出了问题。

The last twenty years of brain imaging research has for the first time revealed the functional organization of the human brain in detail. We now know the function and location of dozens of regions of the brain that were not known 20 years ago. Many of these regions are involved in very specific components of cognition, such as the visual perception of color and motion, the visual recognition of faces, places, and bodies, and even high-level mental processes like understanding the meaning of sentence or thinking about what another person is thinking. Yet this tantalizing new map of the human mind and brain raises a pressing, unanswered question: How does all this precise functional organization get wired up in infancy and childhood? When and how does each little patch of cortex take on its distinctive adult function? Is the function of a given cortical region determined by the pre-existing connectivity of that region to the rest of the brain? How plastic is cortical organization in the event of early brain injury? To answer these questions, we will conduct extensive, longitudinal anatomical and functional scanning of children from birth through age 5. This work was not possible until now because it requires several very recent technical advances, including the new “connectome” scanner at MGH that offers the resolution connectivity maps of the human brain of any scanner in the world, new methods of anatomical imaging in neonates, functional imaging in young infants, and longitudinal registration of brain images from the same person from birth to adulthood. These methods will enable us to test whether the cortical location of each functional region, when scanned at age 4-8, can be predicted from the distinctive connectivity of the same region (registered within subjects across age) at birth. By further including children with focal perinatal strokes, we can test the plasticity of specific cortical regions, versus white matter connections of those regions, in the eventual development of adult functional organization. This work will answer fundamental questions about how the human brain gets wired up over infancy and childhood that are also of great clinical relevance given the high prevalence of neurodevelopmental disorders in which this development goes awry.