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Developmental coupling of brain iron and intrinsic activity in infants during the first 150 days

Lanxin Ji1, Youngwoo Bryan Yoon1, Cassandra L Hendrix1

  • 1Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
|November 18, 2023
PubMed

Insights

Brain iron accumulation and neural activity are linked in infants. This iron-neural coupling strengthens with age, particularly within the default mode network, indicating its role in early brain development.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Biology
  • Medical Imaging

Background:

  • Brain iron is crucial for neurodevelopment, including myelination and neurotransmitter synthesis.
  • Iron levels in the brain increase with age, but its relationship with neural function in early infancy is poorly understood.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the association between brain iron deposition and spontaneous neural activity in healthy infants.
  • To examine how this relationship evolves with age during early development.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized multi-echo functional MRI (fMRI) to estimate R2* relaxometry for brain iron quantification in 48 infants.
  • Employed linked independent component analysis to associate iron deposition (R2*) with neural activity (amplitude of low frequency fluctuations - ALFF) within the default mode network (DMN).
  • Validated findings in an independent cohort of 45 infants.

Main Results:

  • Revealed a developmental coupling between global R2* and ALFF within the default mode network (DMN).
  • Demonstrated that this iron-neural coupling significantly increases with age (r = 0.78, p = 9.2e-11).
  • Confirmed findings in an independent infant dataset.

Conclusions:

  • Highlights the critical role of iron-neural coupling in early brain development.
  • Suggests that the maturation of the default mode network (DMN) is associated with the growth of distributed brain iron.

Keywords:
ALFFBrain developmentBrain ironInfantLinked ICAR2*

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