Figure 1: Comparison of preterm (PT) - and term (T) -born fetuses using voxel-level connectivity.
From: Weak functional connectivity in the human fetal brain prior to preterm birth
Single group maps for (A) term and (B) preterm-born fetuses, showing putative hub regions in the fetal brain at 29.6 weeks. Significant differences (p < 0.05, corrected) between preterm- and term-born fetuses were observed in eventual left hemisphere language regions in the frontal lobe as shown on (C) surface rendering, and (D) axial slices. No regions exhibited increased ICD for preterm-born fetuses compared to term born fetuses. For the preterm-born fetuses, ICD values extracted from a seed centered on the peak difference (27 mm left, 18 mmanterior, 5 mm inferior of the center of image data) were significantly correlated with both gestational age (GA; panel (E)) at scan (r = 0.69, p = 0.003, df = 12) and (F) at birth (r = 0.51, p = 0.03, df = 12) using one-tailed Spearman rank correlation.
