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Published on: August 5, 2017
The brain's functional connectome in young children with prenatal alcohol exposure
Xiangyu Long1, Preeti Kar2, Ben Gibbard3
1Alberta Children's Hospital, 28 Oki Drive NW, Calgary T3B6A8, AB, Canada; Alberta Children's Hospital Research Institute, Canada; Hotchkiss Brain Institute, Canada.
Insights
Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) impacts young children's brain activity, showing less variability over time and more across individuals compared to controls. These early brain differences may contribute to later developmental challenges.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Pediatrics
Background:
- Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) is linked to lifelong cognitive and behavioral issues.
- Previous studies show altered brain network efficiency in older children with PAE.
- Brain differences in young children with PAE remain understudied, despite early symptom onset.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the functional brain connectome in young children (2-7 years) with PAE.
- To analyze functional connectivity using passive viewing fMRI.
- To examine age-related changes in brain network stability in children with PAE.
Main Methods:
- Functional connectome analysis of 34 datasets from children with PAE and 215 from controls.
- Utilized functional connectivity analysis across 90 brain regions.
- Assessed intra- and inter-participant stability and graph theoretical metrics.
Main Results:
- Children with PAE showed similar overall brain network stability to controls.
- PAE group exhibited increasing intra-participant stability with age, indicating reduced brain activity variability.
- Controls showed increasing inter-participant stability with age, while the PAE group did not, suggesting greater functional variability across individuals.
Conclusions:
- This is the first study to characterize the functional connectome in young children with PAE.
- Early childhood reveals a lack of age-related increases in inter-individual brain stability in children with PAE.
- Findings suggest that increased brain variability associated with PAE emerges early in development.
Abstract:
Prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) can lead to altered brain function and structure, as well as lifelong cognitive, behavioral, and mental health difficulties. Previous research has shown reduced brain network efficiency in older children and adolescents with PAE, but no imaging studies have examined brain differences in young children with PAE, at an age when cognitive and behavioral problems often first become apparent. The present study aimed to investigate the brain's functional connectome in young children with PAE using passive viewing fMRI. We analyzed 34 datasets from 26 children with PAE aged 2-7 years and 215 datasets from 87 unexposed typically-developing children in the same age range. The whole brain functional connectome was constructed using functional connectivity analysis across 90 regions for each dataset. We examined intra- and inter-participant stability of the functional connectome, graph theoretical measurements, and their correlations with age. Children with PAE had similar inter- and intra-participant stability to controls. However, children with PAE, but not controls, showed increasing intra-participant stability with age, suggesting a lack of variability of intrinsic brain activity over time. Inter-participant stability increased with age in controls but not in children with PAE, indicating more variability of brain function across the PAE population. Global graph metrics were similar between children with PAE and controls, in line with previous studies in older children. This study characterizes the functional connectome in young children with PAE for the first time, suggesting that the increased brain variability seen in older children develops early in childhood, when participants with PAE fail to show the expected age-related increases in inter-individual stability.
