Ariel Rokem and John Kruper published a research article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) on the rate of infant brain development in/ex utero
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) recently published a research article co-written by UW Psychology Research Associate Professor Ariel Rokem and graduate student John Kruper, in collaboration with researchers at Stanford and Marburg University. The article is titled "Human white matter myelinates faster in utero than ex utero," and is available here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2303491120#executive-summary-abstract
Using a large, openly available dataset collected by the Developing Human Connectome project (dHCP), the research team examined the rate of infant brain development, showing that the brain develops very rapidly in utero and in the first few days of life, and that this rapid development slows down substantially as soon as babies are born.
This research has implications for our basic understanding of early-life brain development, and potential implications for the ways that we mitigate the adverse effects of premature birth.
Rokem and Kruper are both members of the Neuroinformatics R&D Group at the University of Washington, a team that analyzes neuroimaging data to understand the brain and the complex relationships between the properties of brain networks, complex behavior and brain health.