Asynchronous Development of Cerebellar, Cerebello-Cortical, and Cortico-Cortical Functional Networks in Infancy, Childhood, and Adulthood

Abstract

Evidence from clinical studies shows that early cerebellar injury can cause abnormal development of the cerebral cortex in children. Characterization of normative development of the cerebellar and cerebello-cortical organization in early life is of great clinical importance. Here, we analyzed cerebellar, cerebello-cortical, and cortico-cortical functional networks using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data of healthy infants (6 months, n = 21), children (4-10 years, n = 68), and adults (23-38 years, n = 25). We employed independent component analysis and identified 7 cerebellar functional networks in infants and 12 in children and adults. We revealed that the cerebellum was functionally connected with the sensorimotor cortex in infants but with the sensorimotor, executive control, and default mode systems of the cortex in children and adults. The functional connectivity strength in the cerebello-cortical functional networks of sensorimotor, executive control, and default mode systems was the strongest in middle childhood, but was weaker in adulthood. In contrast, the functional coherence of the cortico-cortical networks was stronger in adulthood. These findings suggest early synchronization of the cerebello-cortical networks in infancy, particularly in the early developing primary sensorimotor system. Conversely, age-related differences of cerebellar, cerebello-cortical, and cortico-cortical functional networks in childhood and adulthood suggest potential asynchrony of the cerebellar and cortical functional maturation.

Cerebellar grey matter volume in adolescence is associated with prodromal psychotic symptoms and norm-violating behavior

“…A second limitation is that only a subset of participants had information on parental education and substance abuse, resulting in a reduced sample size for some of the control analyses. Third, although a previous study has found that cerebello-cerebral connectivity patterns are largely developed and similar to those seen in adults by middle childhood (88), the extent to which results from a young adult sample (46) can be generalized to the current adolescent sample remains unknown. Finally, although the reported structure-function associations were robust and highly significant, cerebellar morphology explained only a limited part of the variance in clinical scores.…”

Static and Dynamic Aspects of Cerebro-Cerebellar Functional Connectivity are Associated with Self-reported Measures of Impulsivity: A Resting-State fMRI Study

“…2.3 Group-ICA spatial maps and time-series extraction 2.3.1 Cerebellum-only group-ICA In order to estimate the resting-state networks (RSNs) in the cerebellum, we performed cerebellumonly group ICA after computing a group average cerebellar mask in MNI space. This approach has proven to be more sensitive and robust in capturing cerebellar RSNs as compared to whole-brain group-ICA (Dobromyslin et al, 2012;Kipping et al, 2016). The group-ICA was performed using the GIFT toolbox http://mialab.mrn.org/software/gift/ using different implemented tools.…”

“…A second PCA was performed at the group-level to further reduce the dimensionality to 25 principal components. The choice of number of components was based on findings from previous studies that identified between 7 and 20 cerebellar RSNs using different data-driven methods Bernard et al, 2012;Kipping et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2016). Next, the Infomax algorithm was used to estimate the cerebellar independent components (ICs).…”

Cerebellar development and its mediation role in cognitive planning in childhood

“…However, cerebellar mechanisms associated with cognitive planning are less studied compared to those with working memory and attention (Chen & Desmond, ; Courchesne & Allen, ; Marvel & Desmond, ), especially in children. While mid‐childhood is a crucial period for development of the cerebellum and cognitive planning (Kipping, Margulies, Eickhoff, Lee, & Qiu, ; Kipping, Tuan, Fortier, & Qiu, ; Luciana & Nelson, ), there is a need to investigate and understand the normative development of the cerebellum and its relationship with cognitive planning in early life.…”

“…Anatomically, the anterior cerebellar (I‐V) and inferior posterior cerebellar regions (VIIIa/VIIIb) are connected to the primary cortical regions, which form the sensorimotor system (Buckner, Krienen, Castellanos, Diaz, & Yeo, ; Grodd, Hulsmann, Lotze, Wildgruber, & Erb, ; Kipping et al, ; Kipping et al, ; Wang, Kipping, Bao, Ji, & Qiu, ). In contrast, the lateral posterior cerebellum is most connected to the prefrontal cortex and is expected to be involved in higher‐order cognitive functions (Moore, D'Mello, McGrath, & Stoodley, ; Stoodley, Valera, & Schmahmann, ).…”