The intrinsic neonatal hippocampal network: rsfMRI findings

Many adults cannot voluntarily recall memories before the ages of 3-5, a phenomenon referred to as "infantile amnesia." The development of the hippocampal network likely plays a significant part in the emergence of the ability to form long-lasting memories. In adults, the hippocampus has specialized and privileged connections with certain cortical networks, which presumably facilitate its involvement in memory encoding, consolidation, and retrieval. Is the hippocampus already specialized in these cortical connections at birth? And are the topographical principles of connectivity (e.g., long-axis specialization) present at birth? We analyzed resting-state hippocampal connectivity in neonates scanned within 1 wk of birth (Developmental Human Connectome Project) and compared it with that of adults (Human Connectome Project). We explored the connections of the whole hippocampus and its long-axis specialization to seven canonical cortical networks. We found that the neonatal hippocampal networks show clear immaturity at birth: adults showed hippocampal connectivity that was unique for each cortical network, whereas neonates showed no differentiation in hippocampal connectivity across these networks. Furthermore, neonates lacked long-axis specialization (i.e., along the anterior-posterior axis) of the hippocampus in its differential connectivity patterns to the cortical networks. This immaturity in connectivity may contribute to immaturity in memory formation in the first years of life.NEW & NOTEWORTHY Although both animal data and human data suggest that the hippocampus is immature at birth, to date, there are no direct assessments of human hippocampal functional connectivity (FC) very early in life. Our study explores the FC of the hippocampus to the cortex at birth, allowing insight into the development of human memory systems. In particular, we find that adults and neonates exhibit vastly different hippocampal connectivity profiles-a finding that likely has large developmental implications.