Total brain white matter is a major determinant of IQ in adolescents born preterm

Northam, Gemma B.; Liégeois, F; Chong, W.K.; Wyatt, John; Baldeweg, Torsten

doi:10.1002/ana.22263

Cited by 90 publications

(101 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…However, the formation of WM and myelination starts in the second half of pregnancy and oligodendrocyte differentiation occurs during the last gestational weeks of prenatal development and therefore is severely compromised in several conditions affecting fetal nutrition in this critical period. 22,23 That the last gestational weeks are critical for brain development is confirmed by human MRI studies showing that preterm-born individuals have abnormally altered brain structures, particularly the WM, [24][25][26][27][28][29] and that lower placental weight is associated with altered late-life WM integrity in older individuals. 30 Our second finding is that small birth size contributed to reduced late-life cognitive performance only in participants with lower educational achievement during early life.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Birth Size and Brain Function 75 Years Later

et al. 2014

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BACKGROUND: There are several lines of evidence pointing to fetal and other early origins of diseases of the aging brain, but there are no data directly addressing the hypotheses in an older population. We investigated the association of fetal size to late-age measures of brain structure and function in a large cohort of older men and women and explored the modifying effect of education on these associations. METHODS: Within the AGES (Age Gene/Environment Susceptibility)-Reykjavik population-based cohort (born between 1907 and 1935), archived birth records were abstracted for 1254 men and women who ∼75 years later underwent an examination that included brain MRI and extensive cognitive assessment. RESULTS: Adjustment for intracranial volume, demographic and medical history characteristics, and lower Ponderal index at birth (per kg/m3), an indicator of third-trimester fetal wasting, was significantly associated with smaller volumes of total brain and white matter; βs (95% confidence intervals) were −1.0 (−1.9 to −0.0) and −0.5 (−1.0 to −0.0) mL. Furthermore, lower Ponderal index was associated with slower processing speed and reduced executive functioning but only in those with low education (β [95% confidence interval]: −0.136 [−0.235 to −0.036] and −0.077 [−0.153 to −0.001]). CONCLUSIONS: This first study of its kind provides clinical measures suggesting that smaller birth size, as an indicator of a suboptimal intrauterine environment, is associated with late-life alterations in brain tissue volume and function. In addition, it shows that the effects of a suboptimal intrauterine environment on late-life cognitive function were present only in those with lower educational levels.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Birth Size and Brain Function 75 Years Later

et al. 2014

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“…Findings by other authors suggest that abnormal brain development after perinatal injury or postnatal nutritional deficits are responsible for cognitive deficits in preterm children (12). Preterm birth has long-term effects on cognition, behavior, and future academic achievement primarily as a consequence of global reduction in brain white matter (13). Other studies reveal that breast milk feeding is significantly correlated with intelligence, total brain volume (BV), and total white matter in boys (14).…”

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confidence: 99%

Brain development and scholastic achievement in the Education Quality Measurement System tests in Chilean school-aged children

et al. 2013

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Artículo de publicación ISIBackground: Head circumference (HC), the anthropometric index of both brain development and nutritional background, has been described to be significantly associated with scholastic achievement (SA). The aim of this study was to determine the impact of nutritional background and current nutritional status parameters on SA in the Education Quality Measurement System (SIMCE) tests. Methods: A representative sample of 33 schools was randomly chosen in the Metropolitan Region of Chile. The sample consisted of 1,353 school-aged children of both sexes, from the fifth grade of elementary school and from the first grade of high school who in 2009 took the SIMCE tests. Nutritional status was assessed through anthropometric parameters. Brain development was measured through the HC expressed as HC-for-age Z-score (Z-HC). Results: Students with Z-HC < −2 SD and >2 SD obtained low and high SA, respectively, both in the language and the mathematics tests (P < 0.001). In general, in both grades, those students with Z-HC ≥0 SD increase more than double the probability to obtain language and mathematics SA scores ≥ the median (P < 0.0001). Conclusion: We confirm the hypothesis that HC is the most relevant physical index associated with SA; therefore, children with the lowest scoresThis study was supported in part by Grant 1100431 from the National Fund for Scientific and Technologic Development (FONDECYT), Santiago, Chile

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“…The segmentation of the GM, WM and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), allow for measures of tissue volume to be computed, and can be used to detect abnormalities related to CP as well as preterm birth Northam et al, 2011]. These segmentation approaches facilitate subsequent lesion and anatomical shape analyses to better identify injury, which are detailed in Section 2.2.2 to Section 2.2.4.…”

Section: Tissue Segmentation In the Presence Of Structural Abnormalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…VBM software is supplied in the Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) package (Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UK) which utilises a priori information to perform tissue segmentation prior to VBM analysis Giménez et al, 2006;Hutton et al, 2008;Soria-Pastor et al, 2008]. As a priori constraints typically do not represent extensive injury, a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) was used to relax these constraints [Northam et al, 2011] and yield more accurate segmentations in the presence of gross disturbances. The VBM approach, however, has been found to be susceptible to false positive findings, particularly in the neocortex [Scarpazza et al, 2015].…”

Section: Tissue Segmentation In the Presence Of Structural Abnormalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additional modifications are required to further reduce reliance on prior information and better accommodate injury, for instance by modifying spatial clique potentials based on certain tissue or spatial characteristics, in order to enhance segmentation accuracy in cases such as those presented in Figure 2.1. Although measures of tissue volume can be computed from the tissue segmentations obtained using this approach, [Chou et al, 2007;Dubois et al, 2008b;Northam et al, 2011], volume alone is not sufficient for identifying the heterogeneous range of injury observed in children with CP. Furthermore, although several studies use anatomical parcellation to track measures from diffusion MRI throughout healthy development Faria et al, 2011;Oishi et al, 2011;Oishi et al, 2013;Yoshida et al, 2013], the long scanning times for diffusion MRI complicate the imaging of young children, and are currently not the standard for clinical assessment [Saunders et al, 2007].…”

Section: Shape Analysis Of Subcortical Structuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Automated injury segmentation to assist in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy

Pagnozzi¹

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Cerebral palsy (CP) describes a group of permanent disorders of posture and movement caused by disturbances in the developing brain. It is the most common physical disability of children worldwide and can lead to a wide range of functional impairments. Accurate diagnosis and prognosis, in terms of the type and severity of functional impairment, is difficult due to the wide range of injuries that may occur and the variable effect of plasticity; which leads to inconsistency in the clinical outcomes of children with CP. The use of Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify and locate brain lesions has facilitated the diagnosis and qualitative classification of children with CP.Currently, the quantification of image findings from structural MRIs is not automated and remains labour intensive, hence is not widely performed for clinical assessment. Automated brain image segmentation techniques could reduce the clinical time required toprovide an accurate and reproducible quantification of injury. Although such approaches have been used to study other neurological disorders, the heterogeneous appearance of injury and the large anatomical distortion that occurs in CP require modification of existing algorithms to be sufficiently reliable. As a result, they have not been widely applied toMRIs of children with CP.In this thesis, a series of automated image quantification techniques are presented for analysing the MRI data obtained from children with CP. These techniques identify and quantify the severity of the three main types of injury observed in children with CP; including ventricular enlargement, cortical malformations and white and grey matter injury.The developed automated pipeline involves a number of technical developments and contributions to the automated analysis of CP MRI data. A brain tissue segmentation approach based on the Expectation Maximisation (EM)/Markov Random Field (MRF) approach was developed, with a modified MRF implementation that expects different tissue labels within a given neighbourhood to have a corresponding intensity gradient.Following this segmentation step, three different approaches were used to identify and quantify the three distinct types of injury observed from children with CP, which are all important for clinical assessment. Biomarkers from each type of injury obtained from these approaches were used as independent variables in a devised statistical methodology designed to elucidate significant and generalisable correlations between image-derived measures of injury and patient function.ii Ventricular enlargement was quantified using a model of lateral ventricular shape that encapsulates healthy variation observed in ventricular shape. The residual of this model to a target shape reveals a volume of injury, allowing a measure of involvement of critical adjacent anatomies, such as the thalamus, caudate nucleus and lenticular nucleus, to be computed. This measure of involvement was devised as a way to translate the indirect injury of ventricular enlargement to the direct in...

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Total brain white matter is a major determinant of IQ in adolescents born preterm

Abstract: Preterm birth has a long-term effect on cognition, behavior, and future academic success primarily as a consequence of global brain WM reduction. This emphasizes the need for early therapeutic efforts to prevent WM injury and promote or optimize its development in preterm neonates.

Cited by 90 publications

References 76 publications

Birth Size and Brain Function 75 Years Later

Birth Size and Brain Function 75 Years Later

Brain development and scholastic achievement in the Education Quality Measurement System tests in Chilean school-aged children

Automated injury segmentation to assist in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy

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