Prenatal cannabis exposure, the brain, and psychopathology during early adolescence.

Prenatal cannabis exposure (PCE) is associated with mental health problems in early adolescence, but the possible neurobiological mechanisms remain unknown. In a large longitudinal sample of adolescents (ages 9-12, n=9,322-10,186), we find that PCE is associated with localized differences in gray and white matter of the frontal and parietal cortices, their associated white matter tracts, and with striatal resting state connectivity, even after accounting for potential pregnancy, familial, and child confounds. Variability in forceps minor and pars triangularis diffusion metrics partially longitudinally mediate PCE-ADHD associations.

Developmental Foundations of a Pediatric Mental Health Risk Calculator for Young Children.

Objective: To advance clinical utility of an emerging risk calculator for identifying when to worry and when to act when young children show signs of mental health concerns in pediatric care, we: (1) replicate an early childhood mental health risk algorithm (DECIDE); (2) determine preliminary predictive utility of additional child and parenting assets, advancing a strengths-based framework to reduce the likelihood of biased identification.

Methods: Data were from two independent studies: The national Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS; N=2,763) and the regional Mental Health, Earlier Synthetic Cohort study (MHESC; N=323). Predictors were assessed in toddlerhood/early preschool age.

Baby Open Brains: An open-source dataset of infant brain segmentations.

Reproducibility of neuroimaging research on infant brain development remains limited due to highly variable processing approaches. Progress towards reproducible pipelines is limited by a lack of benchmarks such as gold-standard brain segmentations. These segmentations are limited by the difficulty of infant brain segmentations, which require extensive neuroanatomical knowledge and are time-consuming in nature.

XCP-D: A robust pipeline for the post-processing of fMRI data.

Functional neuroimaging is an essential tool for neuroscience research. Pre-processing pipelines produce standardized, minimally pre-processed data to support a range of potential analyses. However, post-processing is not similarly standardized.

fMRIPrep Lifespan: Extending A Robust Pipeline for Functional MRI Preprocessing to Developmental Neuroimaging.

The adoption of a standardized preprocessing workflow is vital for fostering community, sharing, and reproducibility. fMRIPrep has been a critical advancement towards this end, however, it is limited in its capacity to be applied to data across the lifespan, starting from infancy. Here, we introduce fMRIPrep Lifespan, an extension of fMRIPrep that extends the standardized processing from childhood to senescence to include neonatal, infant, and toddler structural and functional MRI data preprocessing.

Structure-function coupling in the first month of life: Associations with age and attention.

How brain structure relates to function is a critical and open question in neuroscience. Here, we characterize regional variation in structure-function coupling, capturing the degree to which a cortical region's structural connections relate to patterns of coordinated neural activity in healthy, term-born neonates ( = 239). Regional structure-function coupling is heterogeneously patterned across the cortex, with higher coupling in the auditory, lateral prefrontal, and inferior parietal cortices.

Prenatal Adversity and Neonatal White Matter Microstructure Independently Relate to Language Outcomes at Age 2 Years.

Objective: To examine the mediating and moderating associations between prenatal exposure to adversity and neonatal white matter (WM) development on language outcomes at age 2 years.

Study Design: This longitudinal study includes 160 infants (gestational ages 41 - 39 weeks, n = 83; 38 - 37 weeks, n = 62; 36 - 34 weeks, n = 15) with neonatal diffusion MRI and language assessments at age 2 years using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development-III. Prenatal social disadvantage (PSD) and maternal psychosocial stress were assessed throughout the prenatal period.

The generalizability of cortical area parcellations across early childhood.

The cerebral cortex consists of distinct areas that develop through intrinsic embryonic patterning and postnatal experiences. Accurate parcellation of these areas in neuroimaging studies improves statistical power and cross-study comparability. Given significant brain changes in volume, microstructure, and connectivity during early life, we hypothesized that cortical areas in 1- to 3-year-olds would differ markedly from neonates and increasingly resemble adult patterns as development progresses.

Neonatal Brain Volumes and Early Parenting Behavior as Mediators in Associations Between Prenatal Social Disadvantage and Socioemotional Problems in Toddlers.

Background: Social disadvantage has been associated with early socioemotional difficulties. In this study, we examined mechanisms that relate prenatal social disadvantage (PSD) to the development of early socioemotional problems by testing whether these associations were mediated by 1) neonatal brain volumes (BVs) and/or 2) early parenting behaviors.

Methods: Women were recruited early in their pregnancies and followed prospectively.

Advances in Neonatal Neuroimaging.

Neuroimaging has a vital role in assessing the neonatal neuroaxis in many different clinical contexts and in stratifying risk for neurodevelopmental differences. Advances in hardware and computational techniques across modalities have burgeoned in the last several decades, contributing to an improved understanding of brain maturation, development, and plasticity in this unique clinical population.

Prenatal Adversity and Neonatal Brain Connectivity Relate to Emerging Executive Function at Age 2 Years.

Objective: Early life adversity alters the structure and function of higher-order brain networks that subserve executive function (EF). The extent that prenatal exposure to adversity and neonatal white matter (WM) microstructure and resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) underlie problems in emerging EF remains unclear.

Method: This prospective study includes 164 infants (45% female, 85% term-born) who were recruited prenatally and underwent neonatal diffusion and rs-fc magnetic resonance imaging scans.

Towards personalized precision functional mapping in infancy.

The precise network topology of functional brain systems is highly specific to individuals and undergoes dramatic changes during critical periods of development. Large amounts of high-quality resting state data are required to investigate these individual differences, but are difficult to obtain in early infancy. Using the template matching method, we generated a set of infant network templates to use as priors for individualized functional resting-state network mapping in two independent neonatal datasets with extended acquisition of resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) data.

Network Localization of Pediatric Lesion-Induced Dystonia.

Objective: Dystonia is a movement disorder defined by involuntary muscle contractions leading to abnormal postures or twisting and repetitive movements. Classically dystonia has been thought of as a disorder of the basal ganglia, but newer results in idiopathic dystonia and lesion-induced dystonia in adults point to broader motor network dysfunction spanning the basal ganglia, cerebellum, premotor cortex, sensorimotor, and frontoparietal regions. It is unclear whether a similar network is shared between different etiologies of pediatric lesion-induced dystonia.

Cannabis Use and Trajectories of Depression and Stress Across the Prenatal Period.

Importance: Cannabis use among pregnant individuals has increased. Depression and stress are frequently reported motives for cannabis use that may prolong using cannabis during pregnancy.

Objective: To examine associations between changes in depression, stress, and self-reported prenatal cannabis use (PCU), to examine motives for PCU, and to examine whether trajectories of depression and stress vary across individuals who report using cannabis to cope with mental health symptoms and/or stress, those who use cannabis for other reasons, and those who do not report PCU.

Prenatal social disadvantage is associated with alterations in functional networks at birth.

Childhood exposure to social disadvantage is a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders and poor developmental, educational, and occupational outcomes, presumably because adverse exposures alter the neurodevelopmental processes that contribute to risk trajectories. Yet, given the limited social mobility in the United States and other countries, childhood social disadvantage is frequently preceded by maternal social disadvantage during pregnancy, potentially altering fetal brain development during a period of high neuroplasticity through hormonal, microbiome, epigenetic, and immune factors that cross the placenta and fetal blood-brain barrier. The current study examines prenatal social disadvantage to determine whether these exposures in utero are associated with alterations in functional brain networks as early as birth.

Baby Open Brains: An Open-Source Repository of Infant Brain Segmentations.

Reproducibility of neuroimaging research on infant brain development remains limited due to highly variable protocols and processing approaches. Progress towards reproducible pipelines is limited by a lack of benchmarks such as gold standard brain segmentations. Addressing this core limitation, we constructed the Baby Open Brains (BOBs) Repository, an open source resource comprising manually curated and expert-reviewed infant brain segmentations.

Adverse Childhood Experiences and Socioemotional Outcomes of Children Born Very Preterm.

Objective: To examine whether adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) confer risk for socioemotional problems in children born very preterm (VPT).

Study Design: As part of a longitudinal study, 96 infants born VPT at 23-30 weeks of gestation were recruited from a level III neonatal intensive care unit and underwent follow-up at ages 2 and 5 years. Eighty-three full-term (FT) (37-41 weeks gestation) children were recruited from an adjoining obstetric service and the local community.

Functional Connectivity Relationships to Longitudinal Motor Outcomes Differ in Very Preterm Children With and Without Brain Injury.

Background And Objectives: Children born very preterm (VPT) have high rates of motor disability, but mechanisms for early identification remain limited, especially for children who fall behind in early childhood. This study examines the relationship between functional connectivity (FC) measured at term-equivalent age and motor outcomes at 2 and 5 years.

Methods: In this longitudinal observational cohort study, VPT children (gestational age 30 weeks and younger) with and without high-grade brain injury underwent FC MRI at term-equivalent age.

Quantifying brain development in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study: The magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy protocol.

The HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study, a multi-site prospective longitudinal cohort study, will examine human brain, cognitive, behavioral, social, and emotional development beginning prenatally and planned through early childhood. The acquisition of multimodal magnetic resonance-based brain development data is central to the study's core protocol. However, application of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) methods in this population is complicated by technical challenges and difficulties of imaging in early life.

Children born very preterm experience altered cortical expansion over the first decade of life.

The brain develops rapidly from the final trimester of gestation through childhood, with cortical surface area expanding greatly in the first decade of life. However, it is unclear exactly where and how cortical surface area changes after birth, or how prematurity affects these developmental trajectories. Fifty-two very preterm (gestational age at birth = 26 ± 1.

The Generalizability of Cortical Area Parcellations Across Early Childhood.

The cerebral cortex consists of distinct areas that develop through intrinsic embryonic patterning and postnatal experiences. Accurate parcellation of these areas in neuroimaging studies improves statistical power and cross-study comparability. Given significant brain changes in volume, microstructure, and connectivity during early life, we hypothesized that cortical areas in 1- to 3-year-olds would differ markedly from neonates and increasingly resemble adult patterns as development progresses.