ArticlePLoS biology2020
Cortical morphology at birth reflects spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression in the fetal human brain.
Article in PLoS biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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33 citing papers in PubMed, 62 citations in OpenAlex.
- Frequency-specific gyro-sulcal functional differentiation in preterm neonates: Sulcal dominance and gene expression correlates.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Regional BOLD variability reflects microstructural maturation and neuronal ensheathment in the preterm infant cortex.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Prenatal and early postnatal periods differentially shape the maturation of human cortical microstructure and myelin.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Long-term effects of preterm birth on cortical folding trajectories in early childhood.Brain communications · 2026Article
- Fractal analysis of brain shape formation predicts age and genetic similarity in human newborns.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- Functional KCC2 expression marks an evolutionarily conserved population of early-maturing interneurons in the perinatal cortex.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Dynamic structure-function coupling in macroscale neonatal brain networks.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Cross-Species Cortical Geometry Reveals Conserved Gradients Across Primates and Human-Specific Expansion.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Assessment of resting state structural-functional relationships in perisylvian region during the early weeks after birth.Brain structure & function · 2025Article
- Maturation of Neuronal Activity in the Human Cortex Exhibits Robust Spatial Gradients across the Birth Transition.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Emergence of a synergistic scaffold in the brains of human infants.Communications biology · 2025Article
- MRI signatures of cortical microstructure in human development align with oligodendrocyte cell-type expression.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Extrauterine support of pre-term lambs achieves similar transcriptomic profiling to late pre-term lamb brains.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Molecular signatures of cortical expansion in the human foetal brain.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Deciphering the functional specialization of whole-brain spatiomolecular gradients in the adult brain.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Drug targeting in psychiatric disorders - how to overcome the loss in translation?Nature reviews. Drug discovery · 2024Review
- Feature similarity gradients detect alterations in the neonatal cortex associated with preterm birth.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- Spatiotemporal patterns of cortical microstructural maturation in children and adolescents with diffusion MRI.Human brain mapping · 2024Article
- A phylogenetically-conserved axis of thalamocortical connectivity in the human brain.Nature communications · 2023Article
- A Brain Morphometry Study with Across-Site Harmonization Using a ComBat-Generalized Additive Model in Children and Adolescents.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
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17 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Interruption to gestation through preterm birth can significantly impact cortical development and have long-lasting adverse effects on neurodevelopmental outcome. We compared cortical morphology captured by high-resolution, multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in n = 292 healthy newborn infants (mean age at birth = 39.9 weeks) with regional patterns of gene expression in the fetal cortex across gestation (n = 156 samples from 16 brains, aged 12 to 37 postconceptional weeks [pcw]). We tested the hypothesis that noninvasive measures of cortical structure at birth mirror areal differences in cortical gene expression across gestation, and in a cohort of n = 64 preterm infants (mean age at birth = 32.0 weeks), we tested whether cortical alterations observed after preterm birth were associated with altered gene expression in specific developmental cell populations. Neonatal cortical structure was aligned to differential patterns of cell-specific gene expression in the fetal cortex. Principal component analysis (PCA) of 6 measures of cortical morphology and microstructure showed that cortical regions were ordered along a principal axis, with primary cortex clearly separated from heteromodal cortex. This axis was correlated with estimated tissue maturity, indexed by differential expression of genes expressed by progenitor cells and neurons, and engaged in stem cell differentiation, neuron migration, and forebrain development. Preterm birth was associated with altered regional MRI metrics and patterns of differential gene expression in glial cell populations. The spatial patterning of gene expression in the developing cortex was thus mirrored by regional variation in cortical morphology and microstructure at term, and this was disrupted by preterm birth. This work provides a framework to link molecular mechanisms to noninvasive measures of cortical development in early life and highlights novel pathways to injury in neonatal populations at increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorder.
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