Functional and structural thalamocortical connectivity after preterm birth and its relation to later cognitive abilities. (360G-Wellcome-096039_Z_11_Z)

Prematurity is common and increasing, and over one third of survivors have significant cognitive deficits. Preterm infants display widespread but poorly understood MRI abnormalities in thalamus, cortex and white matter which predict later cognitive abilities at 2 and 6 years of age. These develop before term during the period of maximal growth in thalamocortical connections which are required for normal cortical development, suggesting the hypothesis that: cognitive impairment in preterm infants is, at least in part, due to abnormal thalamocortical connectivity. I plan to address two questions: first, how does the thalamocortical unit develop from 26 to 44 weeks gestational age, quantifying the relation of functional and structural connectivity in a cross sectional MRI dataset; and second, is cognitive ability at 2 years of age predicted by structural and/or functional connectivity of the thalamocortical unit at term corrected age, using 832 datasets acquired in a large ongoing tri al. Using novel neuroinformatic techniques including new brain atlases, probabilistic tractography and resting state fMRI I will first examine thalamocortical connectivity for all major lobes and then focus on 26 regions in the temporal lobe. This will illuminate the development of human thalamocortical connectivity and may define new biomarkers for therapeutic intervention studies.