Left temporal plane growth predicts language development in newborns with congenital heart disease

Congenital heart defects are the most common congenital anomalies, accounting for a third of all congenital anomaly cases. While surgical correction dramatically improved survival rates, the lag behind normal neurodevelopment appears to persist. Deficits in higher cognitive functions are particularly common, including developmental delay in communication and oral-motor apraxia. It remains unclear whether the varying degree of cognitive developmental delay is reflected in variability in brain growth patterns. To answer this question, we aimed to investigate whether the rate of regional brain growth is correlated with later life neurodevelopment. Forty-four newborns were included in our study, of whom 33 were diagnosed with dextro-transposition of the great arteries and 11 with other forms of severe congenital heart defects. During the first month of life, neonates underwent corrective or palliative cardiovascular bypass surgery, pre- and postoperative cerebral MRI were performed 18.7 ± 7.03 days apart. MRI was performed in natural sleep on a 3.0 T scanner using an 8-channel head coil, fast spin-echo T2-weighted anatomical sequences were acquired in three planes. Based on the principles of deformation-based morphometry, we calculated brain growth rate maps reflecting average daily growth occurring between pre- and postoperative brain images. An explorative, whole-brain, threshold-free cluster enhancement analysis revealed strong correlation between the growth rate of the Heschl's gyrus, anterior planum temporale and language score at 12 months of age, corrected for demographic variables (P = 0.018, t = 5.656). No significant correlation was found between brain growth rates and motor or cognitive scores. Post hoc analysis showed that the length of hospitalization interacted with this correlation, longer hospitalization resulted in faster enlargement of the internal CSF spaces. Our longitudinal cohort study provides evidence for the early importance of left-dominant perisylvian regions in auditory and language development before direct postnatal exposure to native language. In congenital heart disease patients, the perioperative period results in a critical variability of brain growth rate in this region, which is a reliable neural correlate of language development at 1 year of age.