Abstract #3034

Heterogeneous increase of regional cerebral blood flow and its correlation to functional connectivity during infant brain development

Qinlin Yu^1,2, Huiying Kang³, Minhui Ouyang^1,2, Yun Peng³, John Detre⁴, Fang Fang⁵, and Hao Huang^1,2

¹Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ²Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ³Department of Radiology, Beijing Children’s Hospital, Beijing, China, ⁴Department of Neurology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States, ⁵School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China

The dynamic brain processes during infancy are supported by rapid maturational changes of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) to meet the metabolic demands of brain growth. However, the 4D spatiotemporal distribution of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and its relationship to emergence of functional networks are not known. We acquired pseudo-continuous arterial-spin-labeling perfusion MRI and resting-state fMRI from 48 infants to quantify rCBF and functional connectivity (FC), respectively. The rCBF increased significantly faster in default-mode network (DMN) regions than sensorimotor network regions. The rCBF increases at the DMN regions were revealed as the physiological underpinning of emergence of DMN FC.

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