System Maintenance Notice

Please note that maintenance work is scheduled between 4 AM and 5 AM - CET. During this time, you may experience reduced performance. Thanks for your patience.

Publications

Journal Article Preprint Epublish 2 citations

PubMed: 40799538 DOI: 10.1101/2025.08.04.667740

Precision Functional Neuroimaging Reveals Individually Specific Auditory Responses in Infants.

bioRxiv

Authors: Julia Moser, Alyssa K Labonte, Thomas J Madison, Lana Hantzsch, Han H N Pham, Kimberly B Weldon, M Catalina Camacho, Rebecca F Schwarzlose, Sanju Koirala, Jacob T Lundquist, Sooyeon Sung, Cristian Morales Carrasco, Robert J M Hermosillo, Steven M Nelson, Jed T Elison, Damien A Fair, Chad M Sylvester

Affiliations

  • Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Department of Psychiatry, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA.
  • Neurosciences Graduate Program, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO USA.
  • Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Graduate School of Education, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
  • Biomedical Engineering, Universidad de Santiago, Santiago, Chile.
  • Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA. Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
  • Department of Radiology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA.
  • Taylor Family Institute for Innovative Psychiatric Research, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA.

Abstract

Adaptively responding to salient stimuli in the environment is a fundamental feature of cognitive development in early life, which is enabled by the developing brain. Understanding individual variability in how the brain supports this fundamental process is essential for uncovering neurodevelopmental trajectories and potential neurodevelopmental risks. In the present study, we used a precision functional imaging approach to probe activation in response to salient auditory stimuli and its relation to brain functional networks in individual infants. A minimum of 60 minutes of fMRI BOLD data with an auditory oddball paradigm were collected in ten infants with a mean postmenstrual age of 48 weeks. Results demonstrate the feasibility of performing a precision functional imaging study to investigate individual specific responses to salient stimuli in infants. While responses to the auditory oddball were consistent between individuals in auditory processing areas, responses across the rest of the brain differed across individuals in their magnitude and shape. Individual specific response patterns appeared to be relatively stable and differed from other participant's response patterns, despite fluctuations across runs. Commonalities and differences between individuals demonstrated in this sample contribute to our understanding of how the developing brain instantiates processing of salient stimuli. Our findings suggest that during early development, early unimodal processing is well conserved across individuals, however subsequent perceptual processing is still being personally defined. In this context, individual specific response patterns could be a promising target for biomarkers of normative brain and cognitive development.

MeSH

Functional Neuroimaging, Neuroimaging, Brain, Infant, Neurodevelopment