Spontaneous Brain Dynamics Associated with Acceleration of Long-Term Functional Connectome in Postnatal Development

The first six postnatal months are a critical period for brain development, marked by rapid changes in functional neural circuits. However, long-term changes in neonatal functional connectome lacks an interpretive imaging indicator for the future development due to the non-linearity characteristics. In this study, we introduce an approach to extract intrinsic brain states from short-term brain dynamics to study the long-term (longitudinal) development. We found a high association (r=0.460) between the co-activated pattern of specific brain state and the acceleration pattern of non-linear development of static functional connectome. The fractional occupancy, self-sustaining probability of this short-term state share the similar age tendency with the long-term change rate within the majority of the function connectome. These findings suggest that short-term brain dynamics could serve as potential biomarkers for predicting the long-term development of functional connectome.