Cell Reports (Apr 2023)

Longitudinal development of the cerebellum in human infants during the first 800 days

  • Ya Wang,
  • Liangjun Chen,
  • Zhengwang Wu,
  • Tengfei Li,
  • Yue Sun,
  • Jiale Cheng,
  • Hongtu Zhu,
  • Weili Lin,
  • Li Wang,
  • Wenhua Huang,
  • Gang Li

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 42, no. 4
p. 112281

Abstract

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Summary: Revealing early dynamic development of the normative cerebellar structures contributes to exploring cerebellum-related neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, leveraging infant-tailored cerebellar image processing techniques, we studied the dynamic volumetric developmental trajectories of cerebellum and 27 cerebellar sub-regions and their relationships with behavioral scores based on 511 high-resolution structural MRI scans during the first 800 postnatal days. The ratio of the entire cerebellum to the intracranial volume increases rapidly at first and then peaks at 13 months after birth. Both the absolute and relative volumes of most cerebellar sub-structures exhibit rapid increase at first, then the relative volumes decrease slightly after arriving at peaks (except for X lobules). Each lobule depicts larger absolute volume in males than in females. The within-subject variation of the cerebellar volumetric percentile score is generally stable. The volumetric development of several lobules (e.g., V, Crus I, and Crus II) has a significantly positive correlation with fine motor skills during the age range examined.

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