The DOI matches its Crossref record; 68 of the 68 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Hubs in the human fetal brain network
Open accessAbstract
Advances in neuroimaging and network analyses have lead to discovery of highly connected regions, or hubs, in the connectional architecture of the human brain. Whether these hubs emerge in utero, has yet to be examined. The current study addresses this question and aims to determine the location of neural hubs in human fetuses. Fetal resting-state fMRI data (N = 105) was used to construct connectivity matrices for 197 discrete brain regions. We discovered that within the connectional functional organization of the human fetal brain key hubs are emerging. Consistent with prior reports in infants, visual and motor regions were identified as emerging hub areas, specifically in cerebellar areas. We also found evidence for network hubs in association cortex, including areas remarkably close to the adult fusiform facial and Wernicke areas. Functional significance of hub structure was confirmed by computationally deleting hub versus random nodes and observing that global efficiency decreased significantly more when hubs were removed (p < .001). Taken together, we conclude that both primary and association brain regions demonstrate centrality in network organization before birth. While fetal hubs may be important for facilitating network communication, they may also form potential points of vulnerability in fetal brain development.
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“Most hubs are localized in the cerebellum, while some are in the primary and association cortices [71].”
From Brain structural and functional outcomes in the offspring of women experiencing psychological distress during pregnancy (2024) · cites this paper as [71]
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Citations
Cites
Complex network measures of brain connectivity: Uses and interpretations
Rubinov, M., & Sporns, O. (2010) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.10.003 · Cited by 11,522 · cited 4×
“From these matrices, measures of network centrality, degree and betweenness centrality (BC), were computed for every region by means of graph theoretical analysis, using the brain connectivity toolbox for Matlab (Rubinov and Sporns, 2010).”
InfluentialFunctional connectivity in the resting brain: a network analysis of the default mode hypothesis
Greicius, M. D., Krasnow, B., Reiss, A. L., & Menon, V. (2003) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0135058100 · Cited by 6,358 · cited 3×
“…the ventral and dorsal precuneus, posterior and anterior cingulate gyrus, ventromedial frontal cortex, and interior parietal brain regions (Zuo et al., 2012; Tomasi and Volkow, 2011), brain areas with considerable overlap with sub regions of the default mode network (DMN) (Greicius et al., 2003).”
A report: the definition and classification of cerebral palsy April 2006
Rosenbaum, P., Paneth, N., Leviton, A., Goldstein, M., BAX, M. C. O., Damiano, D. L., Dan, B., & Jacobsson, B. (2007) · Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology · doi:10.1111/j.1469-8749.2007.tb12610.x · Cited by 4,903
Conn : A Functional Connectivity Toolbox for Correlated and Anticorrelated Brain Networks
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“The CONN-fMRI Toolbox (Whitfield-Gabrieli and Nieto Castanon, 2012) was used to compute functional connectivity (FC) matrices.”
MethodA component based noise correction method (CompCor) for BOLD and perfusion based fMRI
Behzadi, Y., Restom, K., Liau, J., & Liu, T. T. (2007) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.04.042 · Cited by 4,502 · cited 1×
“The anatomical component correction (aCompCor) method of estimating and removing noise (Behzadi et al., 2007; Chai et al., 2012) was applied.”
The economy of brain network organization
Bullmore, E., & Sporns, O. (2012) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn3214 · Cited by 3,284 · cited 4×
“Given prior assertions that the centrality of hubs increase their susceptibility to insults (Crossley et al., 2014; Aerts et al., 2016; Bullmore and Sporns, 2012), and given prior reports of the importance of the cerebellum for early development, our results provide new data suggesting the…”
InfluentialWhy do many psychiatric disorders emerge during adolescence?
Paus, T., Keshavan, M., & Giedd, J. N. (2008) · Nature Reviews Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn2513 · Cited by 3,123 · cited 2×
“…notion, the origins of neurodevelopmental disorders are increasingly attributed to alterations occurring during the prenatal period (Di Martino et al., 2014; Paneth et al., 2005; Rosenbaum et al., 2007) despite onsets in symptomatology between the 3rd and 20th years of life (Paus et al., 2008).”
Rice, D., & Barone, S. (2000) · Environmental Health Perspectives · doi:10.1289/ehp.00108s3511 · Cited by 2,944 · cited 2×
“Insight into hub emergence before birth may be of great importance, since the fetal period is a critical time in brain development (Rice and Barone, 2000; Keunen et al., 2017) in which seemingly small disturbances, insults or exposures can produce lifelong changes in neurological and mental…”
Rich-club organization of the human connectome
van den Heuvel, M. P., & Sporns, O. (2011) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.3539-11.2011 · Cited by 2,354
Network hubs in the human brain
van den Heuvel, M. P., & Sporns, O. (2013) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2013.09.012 · Cited by 2,123 · cited 6×
“Advances in neuroimaging and network analyses have revealed the existence of sets of highly connected regions, often called “hubs”, that are critically important for enabling efficient neuronal signaling and communication [1, 2].”
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Items 101–108 of 108
Siciliano, M., Micco, R. D., Pirozzi, M. A., Goldman, J. G., Sant’Elia, V., Silvestro, M., Chiorri, C., Cirillo, M., Trojano, L., Caiazzo, G., et al. (2026) · Neurobiology of Disease · doi:10.1016/j.nbd.2026.107438
Stress during the first 1,000 days of life in humans, when everything begins
Vitalis, T., & Verney, C. (2026) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2026.1781545
Zheng, S., Hou, H., Cao, Y., Mao, G., Li, S., Jin, J., Tang, L., Zhang, Z., & Wei, F. (2026) · Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging · doi:10.1016/j.pscychresns.2026.112254
Fu, Z., Shultz, S., Iraji, A., & Calhoun, V. D. (2026) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2026.122057
Tang, X., Yuan, F., Lin, X., Liu, C., & Ju, R. (2026) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2026.101804
Ng, J., Feusner, J. D., & Hawco, C. S. (2026) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2026.1920417
Fan, L., Li, Y., Duan, S.-Q., An, S., Wu, Y., Yao, N., Zhu, Q., Zhang, M., Huang, Z.-G., & Zhang, S.-P. (2026) · Cognitive Neurodynamics · doi:10.1007/s11571-026-10568-3
“This hub-periphery architecture is conserved across species and is crucial for efficient information processing (Bullmore and Sporns 2009 ; Li et al. 2023 ; M. I. van den Heuvel et al. 2018 ; M. P. van den Heuvel and Sporns 2013 ).”
Metadata
- Authors
- van den Heuvel, M. I., Turk, E., Manning, J. H., Hect, J., Hernandez-Andrade, E., Hassan, S. S., Romero, R., van den Heuvel, M. P., & Thomason, M. E.
- Affiliations
- University Medical Center Utrecht (NL)
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Wayne State University (US)
- United States Department of Health and Human Services (US)
- Venue
- Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2018-04
- Volume
- 30
- Pages
- 108-115
- ISSN
- 1878-9293 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5963507
- OpenAlex
- W2793015464
- Cited by
- 108
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 2
- FWCI
- 5.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Pure Amsterdam UMC (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Research portal (Tilburg University) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Utrecht University Repository (Utrecht University) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Amsterdam UMC (VU Amsterdam) - Institutional Repository (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (452-16-015)
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- National Institutes of Health (ES020957, ES026022, MH110793)
- National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Complex Network Analysis Techniques
- Keywords
- human fetal brain, brain network development, resting-state functional connectivity, cerebellum, visual cortex, motor cortex, association cortex, fusiform face area, Wernicke's area, global efficiency, fetal brain development
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Brain, Female, Humans, Male, Neural Pathways, Pregnancy, Young Adult
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