Spatial development of brain networks during the first six postnatal months

The early postnatal period is crucial for brain development and understanding neurodevelopmental disorders. This study examines spatial brain network development in early infancy, a less-explored area. Using independent component analysis on longitudinal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 74 neurotypical infants, we examined how the spatial organization of brain networks evolves from birth to 6 months. Our findings show significant age-related changes in spatial characteristics. Network-averaged spatial similarity, reflecting alignment between individual and group-level network maps, increased with age. Concurrently, network engagement range, representing voxel intensity fluctuation within networks, decreased, suggesting a consolidation process where voxel contributions became more uniform. Network strength, calculated as the average of all the significant voxel intensities in the network, indicating the degree of involvement in the specific functional network, increased across age in networks such as the frontal-medial prefrontal cortex and visual networks. We found that network size and network center of mass (illustrating spatial distribution alterations of brain networks) increased in the temporal network. These findings fill a gap in infant neuroimaging by spatially characterizing early functional network development. Quantifying changes in topology, size, and similarity offers a framework for understanding early brain maturation and identifying atypical trajectories.