Galdi P, Cabez MB, Farrugia C, Vaher K, Williams LZJ, Sullivan G, Stoye DQ, Quigley AJ, Makropoulos A, Thrippleton MJ, Bastin ME, Richardson H, Whalley H, Edwards AD, Bajada CJ, Robinson EC, Boardman JP. Feature similarity gradients detect alterations in the
neonatal cortex associated with preterm birth.
Hum Brain Mapp 2024;
45:e26660. [PMID:
38488444 PMCID:
PMC10941526 DOI:
10.1002/hbm.26660]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/28/2023] [Revised: 01/18/2024] [Accepted: 02/29/2024] [Indexed: 03/18/2024] Open
Abstract
The early life environment programmes cortical architecture and cognition across the life course. A measure of cortical organisation that integrates information from multimodal MRI and is unbound by arbitrary parcellations has proven elusive, which hampers efforts to uncover the perinatal origins of cortical health. Here, we use the Vogt-Bailey index to provide a fine-grained description of regional homogeneities and sharp variations in cortical microstructure based on feature gradients, and we investigate the impact of being born preterm on cortical development at term-equivalent age. Compared with term-born controls, preterm infants have a homogeneous microstructure in temporal and occipital lobes, and the medial parietal, cingulate, and frontal cortices, compared with term infants. These observations replicated across two independent datasets and were robust to differences that remain in the data after matching samples and alignment of processing and quality control strategies. We conclude that cortical microstructural architecture is altered in preterm infants in a spatially distributed rather than localised fashion.
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