Abstract #0176

Whole-Brain Connectivity Mapping in Infants Reveals Widespread Areas of White Matter Damage Associated with Prematurity

Anand Pandit¹,², Emma Robinson³, Paul Aljabar¹, Gareth Ball¹, Ioannis S. Gousias⁴, Zi Wang⁵, Giovanni Montana⁵, Jo Hajnal¹, Daniel Rueckert⁶, Serena J. Counsell⁷, A. David Edwards¹

¹Centre for the Developing Brain, King's College, London, United Kingdom; ²Centre for the Developing Brain, Imperial College, London, London, United Kingdom; ³FMRIB, University of Oxford, Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom; ⁴Centre for the Developing Brain, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom; ⁵Statistics Section, Department of Mathematics, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom; ⁶Department of Computing, Imperial College, London, United Kingdom; ⁷Centre for the Developing Brain, King's College London, London, United Kingdom

Combining a novel pipeline which maps whole-brain structural connectivity with sophisticated statistical techniques, namely sparse penalised regression and stability selection, we explore the influence of two factors predicted to affect connectivity in the early infant population: development and the degree of prematurity at birth. White matter tracts joining anterior structures were positively associated with development, while more extreme prematurity at birth was related to widespread reductions in connections involving all cortical lobes and several subcortical structures.