Precision functional mapping of the individual human brain near birth

Cortical areas are a fundamental organizational property of the brain, but their development in humans is not well understood. Key unanswered questions include whether cortical areas are fully established near birth, the extent of individual variation in the arrangement of cortical areas, and whether any such individual variation in cortical area location is greater in later-developing association areas as compared to earlier-developing sensorimotor areas. To address these questions, we used functional MRI to collect precision functional mapping (PFM) data in eight individual neonates (mean 42.7 weeks postmenstrual age) over 2-5 days (mean 77.9 min of low motion data per subject [framewise displacement <0.1]). Each subject's dataset was split into two roughly equal halves of data from different days of data collection to measure within-subject reliability and across-subject similarity. Whole-brain patterns of functional connectivity (FC) reached a mean within-subject, across-day reliability of r = 0.78 with 41.9 min of data. Across subject similarity of whole-brain FC was r = 0.62 on average and significantly lower than within-subject similarity (t = 5.9, p < 0.001). Using established methods to identify transitions in FC across the cortical surface, we identified sets of cortical areas for each individual that were subject-specific and highly reliable across split-halves (mean z = 4.4, SD=1.4). The arrangement of cortical areas was thus individually specific across the entire cortical surface, and this individual specificity did not vary as a function of the sensorimotor-association axis. This study establishes the feasibility of neonatal PFM and suggests that cortical area arrangement is individually specific and largely established shortly following birth.