Advances in Child Development and Behavior

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive method to measure brain structure and function that may be applied to human participants of all ages. This chapter reviews our recent work creating a life-span Neurodevelopmental MRI Database. It provides agespecific reference data in fine-grained age intervals from 2 weeks through 89 years. The reference data include average MRI templates, segmented tissue priors, and a common stereotaxic atlas for pediatric and adult participants. The database will be useful for neuroimaging research over a wide range of ages and may be used to make life-span comparisons. The chapter reviews the application of this database to the study of neurostructural development, including a new volumetric study of segmented brain Advances in Child Development and Behavior, Volume 48 # 2015 Elsevier Inc. ISSN 0065-2407 All rights reserved. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/bs.acdb. 2014.11. 001 1 tissue over the life span. We also show how this database could be used to create “studyspecific”MRI templates for special groups and apply this to the MRIs of Chinese children. Finally, we review recent use of the database in the study of brain activity in pediatric populations. 1. STRUCTURAL NEURODEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR Brain development occurs over the life span. We know a lot about the changes in the structure of the brain, including global structural changes (size and shape), neural changes (synaptogenesis, myelination, and tract development), and genetic and epigenetic influences on brain development. The last two decades have seen the emergence of research that shows parallels and causal relations between brain structural development and psychological– behavioral development in participants across the life span. Of special interest in this regard is the emergence of studies that have examined brain functional activity with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) neuroimaging in its relation to cognitive or emotional development (e.g., Braver et al., 1997; Casey et al., 1995, 1998, 1997). In more recent years, direct evidence for the effects of brain structural development has been shown on both cognitive development (Rice, Viscomi, Riggins, & Redcay, 2014) and emotional self-regulation (Fjell et al., 2012). This is an exciting time for those interested in brain–behavior relations across development. The study of brain structural development has been hampered by the lack of tools to measure brain structure in typically developing humans. For many years, the study of brain development was limited to autopsy studies (e.g., Conel, 1939–1967; Huttenlocher, 1990, 1994; Kinney, Brody, Kloman, & Gilles, 1988; Kinney, Karthigasan, Borenshteyn, Flax, & Kirschner, 1994), studies of nonhuman primates (e.g., comparative neurodevelopment, Bourgeois, 1997), or clinical populations (see Richards, 2009, for discussion). A technique that may be used to examine the brain of individual participants at all ages is MRI. TheMRI has been described in several places (e.g., Huettel, Song, & McCarthy, 2004). The head’s materials (skull, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), brain, and muscles) have magnetic properties that differ based on their chemical composition. The MRI uses these differences to identify the type and location of materials inside the head. This allows for the identification, visualization, and quantification of skull, skin, CSF, white and gray matter (GM), myelination, vascularization, and other head properties. The study of brain development using MRIs has a fairly “recent” 2 John E. Richards and Wanze Xie