Marta Korom

The field of adult neuroimaging relies on well-established principles in research design, imaging sequences, processing pipelines, as well as safety and data collection protocols. The field of infant magnetic resonance imaging, by comparison, is a young field with tremendous scientific potential but continuously evolving standards. The present article aims to initiate a constructive dialog between researchers who grapple with the challenges and inherent limitations of a nascent field and reviewers who evaluate their work. We address 20 questions that researchers commonly receive from research ethics boards, grant, and manuscript reviewers related to infant neuroimaging data collection, safety protocols, study planning, imaging sequences, decisions related to software and hardware, and data processing and sharing, while acknowledging both the accomplishments of the field and areas of much needed future advancements. This article reflects the cumulative knowledge of experts in the FIT’NG community and can act as a resource for both researchers and reviewers alike seeking a deeper understanding of the standards and tradeoffs involved in infant neuroimaging.

Positive associations have been found between cortical thickness and measures of parasympathetic cardiac control (e.g., respiratory sinus arrhythmia, RSA) in adults, which may indicate mechanistic integration between neural and physiological indicators of stress regulation. However, it is unknown when in development this brain–body association arises and whether the direction of association and neuroanatomical localization vary across development. To investigate this, we collected structural magnetic resonance imaging and resting-state respiratory sinus arrhythmia data from children in middle childhood (N = 62, Mage = 10.09, range: 8.28–12.14 years). Whole-brain and exploratory ROI analyses revealed positive associations between RSA and cortical thickness in four frontal and parietal clusters in the left hemisphere and one cluster in the right. Exploratory ROI analyses revealed a similar positive association between cortical thickness and RSA, with two regions surviving multiple comparison correction, including the inferior frontal orbital gyrus and the Sylvian fissure. Prior work has identified these cortical areas as part of the central autonomic network that supports integrative regulation of stress response (e.g., autonomic, endocrine, and behavioral) and emotional expression. Our results suggest that the association between cortical thickness and resting RSA is present in middle childhood and is similar to the associations seen during adulthood. Future studies should investigate associations between RSA and cortical thickness among young children and adolescents.

Although decades of research have shown associations between early caregiving adversity, stress physiology and limbic brain volume (e.g., amygdala, hippocampus), the developmental trajectories of these phenotypes are not well characterized. In the current study, we used an accelerated longitudinal design to assess the development of stress physiology, amygdala, and hippocampal volume following early institutional care. Previously Institutionalized (PI; N = 93) and comparison (COMP; N = 161) youth (ages 4–20 years old) completed 1–3 waves of data collection, each spaced approximately 2 years apart, for diurnal cortisol (N = 239) and structural MRI (N = 156). We observed a developmental shift in morning cortisol in the PI group, with blunted levels in childhood and heightened levels in late adolescence. PI history was associated with reduced hippocampal volume and reduced growth rate of the amygdala, resulting in smaller volumes by adolescence. Amygdala and hippocampal volumes were also prospectively associated with future morning cortisol in both groups. These results indicate that adversity-related physiological and neural phenotypes are not stationary during development but instead exhibit dynamic and interdependent changes from early childhood to early adulthood.

Children at risk for neglect or abuse are vulnerable to delays in inhibitory control development. Prior findings suggest that early parenting interventions that target parental sensitivity and responsiveness during infancy can improve executive function outcomes of high‐risk children during preschool years; however, little is known about how persistent these gains are through middle childhood. Participants included 76 CPS‐involved children who were randomly assigned to either the ABC intervention ( N = 32) or the Developmental Education for Families (DEF) control intervention ( N = 44), and 53 low‐risk children. Children completed the Stop Signal Reaction Time (SSRT) paradigm at ages 8 and 10. Intervention group predicted performance on the SSRT at age 8 such that children who received the ABC intervention and children in the low‐risk group performed significantly better than children who received the DEF intervention (ABC vs. DEF: Cohen’s d = 0.92; low‐risk group vs. DEF: d = 0.56). The performances of the ABC and the low‐risk groups were not statistically different. There were no significant group differences in SSRT performance at age 10. These findings demonstrate that the ABC intervention has long‐term beneficial effects on inhibitory control development in children with a history of early caregiving adversity. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/P9oLyfo7pYA