Brains Scans Reveal a Massive Surge of Connectivity When Babies Are Born

Written by Carly Cassella on November 25, 2024. Posted in Current News

An unprecedented glimpse of the human brain as it leaves the womb and enters the outside world has revealed an explosive growth spurt.

Within the first few months of a newborn’s life, brain scans suggest, a sudden influx of sensory information triggers the formation of billions of new neural connections that did not exist in the womb.

Previous studies have analyzed fetuses and newborns separately, but this new study considered the brains of 140 individuals on both sides of the birth transition. The dataset includes 126 prenatal scans, starting roughly 6 months post-conception, and 58 postnatal scans, in the three or so months after birth.

“With this one-of-the-kind longitudinal dataset, we now, for the first time, have an opportunity to investigate brain changes across birth,” neuroscientist Lanxin Ji from New York University (NYU) told ScienceAlert.

“Surprisingly, there is still a major gap in our understanding of how the human brain changes during this crucial developmental phase.”

Principal investigator Moriah Thomason from NYU is a world leader in fetal MRI research, and she has been scanning the brains of mothers and their children for years now. Fetal MRI studies are subject to distortion and signal loss, and because researchers are measuring blood oxygen levels in the brain, this may not be a perfect picture of all the communicating neurons present.

That said, this is the first sizable study to look at how resting functional MRI activity might shift across the birth transition.

“Our results suggest that birth is not merely a continuation of prenatal brain growth but a distinct, transformative stage that impacts future cognitive and behavioral outcomes,” explained Ji.

In the weeks following birth, models show a surge in neural connections that suggest the brain is desperately trying to process and integrate new kinds of information.

See more here Science Alert

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