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Abstract #3434

Emergence of the Brain's Default Network: Evidence from Two-Week-Old to Four-Year-Old Healthy Pediatric Subjects

Wei Gao1, Hongtu Zhu2, Kelly Giovanello3, Keith Smith4, Dinggang Shen5, John Gilmore6, Weili Lin5

1Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA; 2Department of Biostatistics and BRIC, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; 3Department of Psychology and BRIC, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; 4Department of Radiology, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; 5Department of Radiology and BRIC; 6Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill


While most of the studies on default network have focused on adult subjects, the delineation of its developmental process may shed light on its functional evolution with age. To this end, healthy pediatric subjects from 2wks to 4yrs of age were recruited in this study and resting functional MRI (rfcMRI) were employed to acquire resting MRI images so as to gain insights into the temporal evolution of the default network in the developing brain.