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Abstract #2951

Quantitative Assessments of Growth Trajectories of Cortical Thickness During the First 18 Mons of Life

Weili Lin1, Li Wang1, Gang Li1, Feng Shi1, Jingxin Nie1, Dinggang Shen1

1Biomedical Research Imaging Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, United States


Healthy pediatric subjects were recruited for a longitudinal study. Each subject was scanned every three mons starting from birth to 1 yr-old and again at 18mons old. A novel approach taking advantage information available from the longitudinal design was employed for CTH measures. The CTH of the temporal and frontal lobes outgrow the parietal and occipital lobes and reach ~ 4mm at 18mons. The primary language and auditory areas exhibit the largest CTH increase CTH < 6mons of life when compared to motor/sensory/visual cortices. Interestingly, the visual cortex exhibits a relatively stable CTH throughout the first 18mons of life.