Functional MRI (fMRI) has been used with considerable success for the non-invasive mapping of cerebral function in adults and older children, and for detecting activation in response to various sensory stimuli. The overall goal of this Exploratory Grant in Pediatric Brain Disorders proposal is to develop and evaluate fMRI for detecting neuronal activation in response to sensory stimuli in non-sedated term and preterm infants. fMRI studies of cerebral activation in response to sensory stimulation in infants are rare, and the ability of this technique to monitor maturational changes in the developing brain remains largely unexplored.
Our specific aims are [I] to utilize echo-planar cerebral imaging to demonstrate the ability of fMRI to detect cortical activation in non-sedated term and preterm infants in response to visual and auditory stimuli; [2] to demonstrate the ability of fMR1 to monitor changes over time in the responses of the auditory and visual cortical regions to sensory stimuli in infants of 27 to 52 weeks postmenstrual age and to determine if there are detectable fMR1 differences between the term and preterm subjects; and [3] to demonstrate the ability of fMRI to detect cerebral activity produced specifically in response to language tokens, and thereby to assess the development of language specialization within the developing newborn brain. Guided by prior work with nonimaging studies of infants, we propose to demonstrate that cortical regions relating to linguistic abilities already exist in the brains of non-sedated term neonates. Overall, these studies will establish the utility of using fMRI as an important tool for understanding the development of regional brain function in newborn infants, non-invasively and without sedation. Our group has experience studying the impact of injury on developing brain, and utilizing this novel technology, our long term goal is to detect functional differences in the cerebral development of term and very low birth weight preterm infants.
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