Fetal to Infant Brain Iron Development and Its Impact on Neural Activity

COEX 

As a pivotal factor in neural development, iron accumulates rapidly in the brain from the earliest stages of life. Our analyses leverage fetal and infant multi-echo fMRI data to estimate T2* and investigate iron accumulation in the human brain from prenatal gestational age 20 weeks to postnatal 20 weeks. We will present data showing iron level changes spanning the perinatal period, and will delve into the challenges we encountered and the experiments we conducted to accurately estimate T2* from fetal fMRI data, which often involves significant motion artifacts. In addition, we will show how iron measures couple with neural activity through a cross-modality analysis in the context of early development. This study will be the first to chart the developmental trajectory of iron across the birth transition period. It will open new opportunities for exploring the role of iron in facilitating the emergence of early functional networks.