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

近二十年来的脑成像研究首次揭示了大脑的功能组织。 人类大脑的细节。我们现在知道了大脑中数十个不同区域的功能和位置 20年前就知道了。这些区域中的许多都涉及到非常具体的认知成分，例如 对颜色和运动的视觉感知，对面部、位置和身体的视觉识别，甚至是高级视觉识别 心理过程，比如理解句子的意思或思考另一个人是什么 思考。然而，这张诱人的人类思维和大脑的新地图提出了一个紧迫的、尚未回答的问题： 所有这些精确的职能组织是如何在婴儿期和儿童期建立起来的？何时以及如何 大脑皮层的每一小块都有其独特的成人功能？是给定皮质区域的函数 是由该区域与大脑其他部分先前存在的连接决定的吗？塑料是如何皮质的 组织在早期脑损伤事件中的作用？为了回答这些问题，我们将进行广泛的， 对儿童从出生到5岁的纵向解剖和功能扫描。这项工作没有 到目前为止是可能的，因为它需要几个最新的技术进步，包括新的“连接件” MGH的扫描仪，提供世界上任何扫描仪的人脑分辨率连接图， 新生儿解剖成像、婴幼儿功能成像和纵向成像的新方法 记录同一个人从出生到成年的脑部图像。这些方法将使我们能够测试 在4-8岁扫描时，每个功能区的皮质位置是否可以从 出生时同一区域的独特连接(在不同年龄的受试者中登记)。通过进一步包括 对于患有局灶性围产期中风的儿童，我们可以测试特定皮质区域的可塑性，而不是脑白质 这些区域的联系，在成人功能组织的最终发展中。这项工作将 回答关于人类大脑是如何在婴儿期和儿童期连接起来的基本问题 同样具有重要的临床意义，因为在这种情况下，神经发育障碍的高流行率 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.