Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine have mapped the surface of the cortex of the young human brain with unprecedented resolution, revealing the development of key functional regions from two months before birth to two years after.
The new cortical development mapping, reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents a valuable resource for further research on brain development and offers a powerful new approach to the study of brain-development conditions such as autism and schizophrenia.
“These results provide an important reference for exploring and understanding the dynamics of early brain development,” said study senior author Gang Li, PhD, associate professor of radiology at the UNC School of Medicine.
The study’s first author was Ying Huang, a PhD candidate in Li’s laboratory.
The cortex is a sheet of brain cells that wraps around much of the rest of the brain. The most evolutionarily advanced brain region, it is proportionately larger in humans than in other mammals, and is responsible for higher, distinctively human functions including language abilities and abstract reasoning.
The third trimester of pregnancy through the first two years of life is the most dynamic period in cortical development. The cortex thickens markedly during this interval, and grows at an even faster pace in terms of surface area, by forming complicated cortical folds.
