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[Brain plasticity during development: physiological bases and functional MRI approach]
1Service de Radiologie Pédiatrique, Hôpital Necker-Enfants Malades, Paris.
Insights
Brain functional MRI (fMRI) offers insights into pediatric brain development and recovery from injury. Despite challenges with young subjects, fMRI reveals developmental changes and plasticity in children's brains.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Neuroscience
- Cognitive Neuroscience
Context:
- Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is an emerging tool for studying pediatric brain development and functional reorganization after lesions.
- Methodological challenges in pediatric fMRI include subject movement, cooperation, and understanding the impact of immature brain physiology on results.
- Limited published studies exist due to these pediatric-specific challenges.
Purpose:
- To explore the utility of fMRI in understanding cognitive development and brain plasticity in children.
- To review current findings on fMRI in pediatric populations, from neonates to school-age children.
- To discuss the implications of brain maturation and post-lesional plasticity in the pediatric context.
Summary:
- Brain maturation involves synaptic changes influencing learning, variability, and plasticity.
- fMRI studies in school-aged children show adult-like activation patterns for motor, language, and working memory tasks.
- Neonatal and infant fMRI reveals distinct visual cortex activation patterns.
- Children exhibit greater post-lesional plasticity, with potential ipsilateral motor cortex activation and interhemispheric language network shifts following brain lesions or epilepsy.
Impact:
- fMRI provides valuable data on typical brain development and functional recovery in children.
- Findings highlight the significant plasticity of the developing brain, especially after injury.
- Understanding these processes can inform clinical assessments and interventions for pediatric neurological conditions.
Abstract:
Brain functional MRI (fMRI) is a new tool for the study of the development of cognitive functions in healthy children ("natural plasticity"), as well as for the assessment of functional reorganization following brain lesions. However, methodological difficulties related to the pediatric population (movements, cooperation), along with unsolved issues about the influence of physiological parameters of the immature brain on fMRI results, explain the limited number of published studies. Normal brain maturation is characterized by a transient phase of synaptic redundancy followed by selective synaptic regression until adulthood, that forms the neurobiological correlates of both learning and individual variability of cortical anatomy and functional organization, and of the large potential for post-lesional plasticity in children. fMRI in school-age children demonstrated activation patterns comparable to adults during motor, language, and working memory tasks. In neonates and infants, fMRI showed significant differences of visual cortex activation. Post-lesional plasticity is more pronounced in younger children. In motor cortex, activation of ipsilateral hemisphere may be seen in cases of rolandic lesions. Interhemispheric shift of language networks occurs mostly in cases of destructive or large brain lesions, or in cases of early refractory epilepsy.