Functional individual variability development of the neonatal brain

Individual variability in cognition and behavior results from the differences in brain structure and function that have already emerged before birth. However, little is known about individual variability in brain functional architecture at local level in neonates which is of great significance to explore owing to largely undeveloped long-range functional connectivity and segregated functions in early brain development. To address this, resting-state fMRI data of 163 neonates ranged from 32 to 45 postconceptional weeks (PCW) were used in this study, and various functional features including functional parcellation similarity, local brain activity and local functional connectivity were used to characterize individual functional variability. We observed significantly higher local functional individual variability in superior parietal, sensorimotor, and visual cortex, and lower variability in the frontal, insula and cingulate cortex relative to other regions within each hemisphere. The mean local functional individual variability significantly increased with age, and the age effect was found larger in brain regions such as the occipital, temporal, prefrontal and parietal cortex. Our findings promote the understanding of brain plasticity and regional differential maturation in the early stage.