Neuroscientists have scanned the brains of newborn babies and were amazed by the results. Graphic

Previously, neuroscientists analyzed fetuses and newborns separately, but in a new study conducted at New York University, they looked at the brains of 140 children at birth. That is, first in the womb, and then immediately after birth.

As a result, scientists found that during the first few months of life, a sudden influx of sensory information causes the formation of billions of new neural connections that did not exist in the womb. This indicates that the brain is desperately trying to process and integrate new types of information, Science Alert writes.

During the study, the researchers conducted 126 prenatal scans, starting about 6 months after conception, and 58 postnatal scans within about three months after birth.

"Thanks to this one-of-a-kind longitudinal dataset, we now, for the first time, can study brain changes during birth. Surprisingly, there is still a large gap in our understanding of how the human brain changes during this crucial developmental phase," comments neuroscientist Lanxin Ji of New York University.

Principal Investigator Moriah Thomason of New York University is a world leader in fetal MRI research and has been scanning the brains of mothers and their babies for many years. Fetal MRI studies are subject to distortion and signal loss, and because researchers measure blood oxygen levels in the brain, it may not be a perfect picture of all the communication neurons present. Nevertheless, this is the first significant study to examine how resting-state functional MRI activity may change during the transition from birth.

"Our findings suggest that birth is not just a continuation of intrauterine brain growth, but a separate transformative stage that affects future cognitive and behavioral outcomes," said the neuroscientist.

Within weeks of birth, the study participants showed a surge in neural connections, indicating that the brain is desperately trying to process and integrate new types of information.

The new findings support the hypothesis that in the womb, the human brain has basic neural networks that deal with "local" matters. After birth, however, these local matters become "global," communicating with networks that are farther away than ever before.

After this initial accelerated growth, the newborn brain gradually undergoes reorganization to cut down inefficient pathways between networks and strengthen others. The result is a significant change in the way the brain works.

Birth is one of the most important events in a person's life, and as neuroimaging advances, scientists are getting closer to observing this moment in the most important organ.

"This work lays the groundwork for future work on the maturation time of functional brain networks spanning the perinatal period. Based on this work, further studies can be imagined that will examine how factors such as gender, prematurity, and prenatal adversity interact with the timing and growth patterns of children's brain network development," said Ji.

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