RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 White matter myelination during early infancy is explained by spatial gradients and myelin content at birth
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.03.29.437583
DO 10.1101/2021.03.29.437583
A1 Mareike Grotheer
A1 Mona Rosenke
A1 Hua Wu
A1 Holly Kular
A1 Francesca R. Querdasi
A1 Vaidehi Natu
A1 Jason D. Yeatman
A1 Kalanit Grill-Spector
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/23/2021.03.29.437583.abstract
AB Development of myelin, a fatty sheath that insulates nerve fibers, is critical for brain function. Myelination during infancy has been studied with histology, but postmortem data cannot evaluate the longitudinal trajectory of white matter development. Here, we obtained longitudinal diffusion MRI and quantitative MRI measures of R1 in 0, 3 and 6 months-old human infants, and (ii) developed an automated method to identify white matter bundles and quantify their properties in each infant’s brain. We find that R1 increases from newborns to 6-months-olds in all bundles. R1 development is nonuniform: there is faster development in white matter that is less mature in newborns, and along inferior-to-superior as well as anterior-to-posterior spatial gradients. As R1 is linearly related to myelin fraction in white matter bundles, these findings open new avenues to elucidate typical and atypical white matter myelination in early infancy, which has important implications for early identification of neurodevelopmental disorders.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.