Cited by 63Functional Brain Connectivity StudiesNeonatal and fetal brain pathologyInfant Development and Preterm Care

Functional brain connectivity in ex utero premature infants compared to in utero fetuses

Open access
De Asis-Cruz, Josepheen, Kapse, Kushal, Basu, Sudeepta K., Said, Mariam, Scheinost, Dustin, Murnick, Jonathan, Chang, Taeun, du Plessis, Adre +1 more·2020·NeuroImage

Abstract

Brain structural changes in premature infants appear before term age. Functional differences between premature infants and healthy fetuses during this period have yet to be explored. Here, we examined brain connectivity using resting state functional MRI in 25 very premature infants (VPT; gestational age at birth <32 weeks) and 25 healthy fetuses with structurally normal brain MRIs. Resting state data were evaluated using seed-based correlation analysis and network-based statistics using 23 regions of interest (ROIs) per hemisphere. Functional connectivity strength, the Pearson correlation between blood oxygenation level dependent signals over time across all ROIs, was compared between groups. In both cohorts, connectivity between homotopic ROIs showed a decreasing medial to lateral gradient. The cingulate cortex, medial temporal lobe and the basal ganglia shared the strongest connections. In premature infants, connections involving superior temporal, hippocampal, and occipital areas, among others, were stronger compared to fetuses. Premature infants showed stronger connectivity in sensory input and stress-related areas suggesting that extra-uterine environment exposure alters the development of select neural networks in the absence of structural brain injury.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117043

Cites

86 of 86 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Connectivity strength between most symmetric regions increases with advancing gestational age.

    “Connectivity strength between most symmetric regions has been shown to increase with advancing gestational age [56, 62].”

    From Brain structural and functional outcomes in the offspring of women experiencing psychological distress during pregnancy (2024) · cites this paper as [62]

    Section 3.3 reports that connectivity strength in premature infants and fetuses did not correlate with age. That contradicts the attributed claim of increasing connectivity strength with advancing gestational age. Our copy provides no page number for this passage. (LLM, conf=0.88)

    Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
  • A medial-to-lateral gradient of network organization has been demonstrated, such that connections between homologous medial structures are stronger than those connecting lateral areas in utero.

    “Consistent with axonal growth patterns, a medial-to-lateral gradient of network organization has been demonstrated, such that connections between homologous medial structures are stronger than those connecting lateral areas in utero.”

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. Rutherford, S., Sturmfels, P., Angstadt, M., Hect, J., Wiens, J., van den Heuvel, M.I., Scheinost, D., Thomason, M., Sripada, C., 2019. Observing the origins of human brain development: automated processing of fetal fMRI. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101 /525386. · DOI
  2. Scheinost, D., Onofrey, J.A., Kwon, S.H., Cross, S.N., Sze, G., Ment, L.R., Papademetris, X., 2018. A fetal fMRI specific motion correction algorithm using 2nd order edge features. In: 2018 IEEE 15th International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2018). Ieeexplore. ieee.org, pp. 1288-1292.
  3. Volpe, J.J., Inder, T.E., Darras, B.T., de Vries, L.S., du Plessis, A.J., Neil, J., Perlman, J.M., 2017. Volpe's Neurology of the Newborn E-Book. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
De Asis-Cruz, J., Kapse, K., Basu, S. K., Said, M., Scheinost, D., Murnick, J., Chang, T., du Plessis, A., & Limperopoulos, C.
Affiliations
  • Children's National (US)
  • Yale University (US)
Corresponding author
Limperopoulos, Catherine
Venue
NeuroImage
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2020-10
Volume
219
Pages
117043
ISSN
1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3035293276
Cited by
63
References
86
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 1
FWCI
4.43
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • NeuroImage (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
  • Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center
  • Canadian Institutes of Health Research
  • National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Neonatal and fetal brain pathology
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Infant Development and Preterm Care
Keywords
brain functional connectivity, very preterm infants, fetal brain development, resting-state fMRI, seed-based correlation analysis, network-based statistics, cingulate cortex, medial temporal lobe, basal ganglia, hippocampus, preterm birth
MeSH terms
Default Mode Network, Brain, Brain Mapping, Female, Fetus, Gestational Age, Humans, Infant, Newborn, Infant, Premature, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Nerve Net

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review