Unveiling Fetal Cortical Folding: Neuroimaging and Genetic Insights

COEX 

The human fetal cerebral cortex undergoes genetically orchestrated gyrification (cortical folding) during the prenatal period. Recent fetal brain MRI advancements allow spatiotemporal quantification of macro- and microstructures during cortical folding (Figure 1a). Researchers aim to understand the relationship between morphological changes and underlying microstructural alterations associated with cortical folding (Garcia et al., 2021).
Transcriptomic technologies revealed regional gene expression patterns during prenatal development (Miller et al., 2014, Li et al., 2018). Pioneering studies by (Huang et al., 2013) and (Vasung et al., 2021) correlated MRI measurements with relevant genes using ex-vivo and in-vivo fetal brains but fell short in describing cortical folding. Therefore, we aim to comprehensively characterize spatiotemporal macro- and microstructural development of the fetal cerebral cortex by integrating in-utero fetal structural MRI, diffusion MRI, and gene expression.