Associations between the size of the amygdala in infancy and language abilities during the preschool years in normally developing children

作者：Ortiz Mantilla Silvia; Choe Myong sun; Flax Judy; Grant P Ellen; Benasich April A^*

来源：NeuroImage, 2010, 49(3): 2791-2799.

DOI：10.1016/j.neuroimage.2009.10.029

• Amygdala
• Infant
• Language development
• Naturally sleeping MRI
• Emotion

Recently, structural MRI studies in children have been used to examine relations between brain volume and behavioral measures However. most of these studies have been done in children older than 2 years of age. Obtaining volumetric measures in infants is considerably more difficult, as structures are less well defined and largely unmyelinated. making segmentation challenging Moreover, It IS Still unclear whether individual anatomic variation across development, in healthy, normally developing infants. is reflected in the configuration and function of the mature brain and, as importantly, whether variation in Infant brain structure might be related to later cognitive and linguistic abilities In this longitudinal study, using T1 structural MRI. we identified links between amygdala volume in normally developing, naturally sleeping, 6-month infants and their subsequent language abilities at 2, 3 and 4 years The Images were processed and manually segmented using Cardviews to extract volumetric measures Intra-rater reliability for repeated segmentation was 87 73% of common voxel agreement Standardized language assessments were administered at 6 and 12 months and at 2, 3 and 4 years Significant and consistent correlations were found between amygdala size and language abilities Children with larger right amygdalae at 6 months had lower scores oil expressive and receptive language measures at 2, 3, and 4 years. Associations between amygdala size and language outcomes have been reported in children with autism. The findings presented here extend this association to normally developing children.

• 出版日期2010-2-1