Assessing Reorganisation of Functional Connectivity in the Infant Brain

As maturation of neural networks continues throughout childhood, brain lesions insulting immature networks have different impact on brain function than lesions obtained after full network maturation. Thus, longitudinal studies and analysis of spatial and temporal brain signal correlations are a key component to get a deeper understanding of individual maturation processes, their interaction and their link to cognition. Here, we assess the connectivity pattern deviation of developing resting state networks after ischaemic stroke of children between 7 and 17 years. We propose a method to derive a reorganisational score to detect target regions for overtaking affected functional regions within a stroke location. The evaluation is performed using rs-fMRI data of 16 control subjects and 16 stroke patients. The developing functional connectivity affected by ischaemic stroke exhibits significant differences to the control cohort. This suggests an influence of stroke location and developmental stage on regenerating processes and the reorganisational patterns.