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TLDR

Rapid emergence of organized spontaneous brain activity in the fetal period is difficult to characterize with fMRI, requiring methods that capture developmental transformations. The study introduces maturational networks, a framework that conceptualizes functional networks as emerging properties of the developing brain. Maturational networks incorporate age‑related changes in connectivity directly into network estimation, unlike standard methods that assume consistent connectivity patterns. Using this framework reveals a rich hierarchy of emerging functional connections in the in‑utero brain, with associative areas playing a central role, indicating that high‑level cognitive connections arise before extra‑uterine exposure.

Abstract

<h3>ABSTRACT</h3> A key feature of the fetal period is the rapid emergence of organised patterns of spontaneous brain activity. However, characterising this process in utero using functional MRI is inherently challenging and requires analytical methods which can capture the constituent developmental transformations. Here, we introduce a novel analytical framework, termed "maturational networks", that achieves this by conceptualising functional networks as an emerging property of the developing brain. Compared to standard network analysis methods that assume consistent patterns of connectivity across development, our method incorporates age-related changes in connectivity directly into network estimation. This enables us to reveal the richness of emerging functional connections and the hierarchy of their maturational relationships in the in-utero brain with unprecedented anatomical specificity. We show that the associative areas play a central role within prenatal functional architecture, therefore indicating that functional connections supporting high-level human cognition start emerging even prior to exposure to the extra-utero environment.