Prematurity disrupts brain maturation during a critical period of development, leading to structural brain alterations that might underlie the observed later neurodevelopmental impairments in preterm children. Using diffusion MRI based whole-brain constrained spherical deconvolution tractography, we constructed structural connectomes to study the impact of prematurity on neonatal brain network organization at term-equivalent age. We found that, globally, in comparison to full-term infants, structural networks of very-preterm infants at term showed an increased segregation and decreased capacity to integrate information across brain regions and, in particular, a diminished connectivity strength in subnetworks localized mainly in frontal, limbic and para-limbic regions.
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