Project 455153

Every year in Canada, more than 25000 infants are born prematurely (inferior to 37 weeks of gestation). These infants will subsequently be very at risk to develop neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) requiring professional services. These disorders refer to a group of pathologies including motor, cognitive, language, social-emotional and motor deficits. The most common diagnoses are autism spectrum disorders, attentional and other learning disorders which are associated with personal, social and/or academic impairment. Although these disorders are very frequent, we still can't diagnose them early and before the problems have become overwhelming. However, recent advances have highlighted the role of the cerebellum, in NDD. We also know that cerebellar growth is disrupt in the case of a preterm birth. Despite this, no one has evaluated if cerebellar atypical growth could be detected as early as the first year of life and if it could be associated to atypical neurodevelopmental profile. This study will use quantitative magnetic resonance imaging to characterize preterm's cerebellar maturation during the first year of life, as compared to the typical development in full term infants. For this purpose, we will acquire serial quantitative brain images during the first year of life. We will measure fine volumetric differences between these two populations, on cerebellum and different sub-regions of the cerebellum. We will also study the links between the level of cerebellar maturation and neurodevelopmental assessment scores (e.g., motor skills, cognition, etc.). Such a longitudinal study would improve our knowledge of the underlying substrates for cerebellar recovery and dysmaturation following pre-term birth. We hope that this project will identify novel biomarkers of abnormal development that could subsequently be used for an early detection of NDD. This work is a steppingstone towards the development of a new MRI quantification method to optimize infant follow-up.