The way the brain organizes in utero is associated with cognition and behaviour in later life. Infants that are born early have differently organized brain networks compared to infants born at term. Our study used data from the developing Human Connectome Project to explore structural topology across neonates born at different gestational ages. Our results show that babies born early had less connected, more segregated brain topology compared to term infants. We then conducted generative network models to simulate the emergence of network organization. Through this, we found that in order to replicate preterm-like topology, the models required tighter wiring constraints compared to term infant networks. This means the preterm networks preferentially selected short connections and weighed topologically valuable connections more than term networks. These wiring constraints results in a preservation of vital, long-range connections despite overall short connection lengths across the network. Overall, this study highlights that altered network topology in infants born premature is related to a renegotiation of wiring principles.

The full paper can be read here: Mousley, A., Akarca, D. & Astle, D.E. Premature birth changes wiring constraints in neonatal structural brain networks. Nat Commun 16, 490 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-55178-x

External web link:

Code: https://github.com/alexamousley/neonatal_generative_network_modeling
Data: https://osf.io/ng43c/