Regional cortical development in very low birth weight infants with normal neurodevelopmental outcome assessed by 3D-ultrasound.

OBJECTIVE: Three-dimensional ultrasound (3D-US) offers new perspectives in cerebral imaging. STUDY DESIGN: This prospective study aimed to determine whether 3D-US is appropriate to assess cortical development of the premature brain, and compare it to previously established reference values assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Preterm infants with a gestational age (GA) of <32 weeks were examined by serial 3D-US scans. RESULT: Data of 30 patients with normal neurological development at the age of 5 years were included in the analysis. Cortical development was graded according to a five-point scoring system, and data were stratified into 6 age groups. Cortical developmental scores were established for various brain regions. In the frontal and frontoparietal regions, 3D-US reference values differed from published MRI reference values, but were consistent with the published data in all other regions. CONCLUSION: 3D-US reference values facilitate routine diagnostics and enable the evaluation of cortical development in preterm infants.

Is our self based on reward? Self-relatedness recruits neural activity in the reward system.

Every organism has to evaluate incoming stimuli according to their current and future significance. The immediate value of stimuli is coded by the reward system, but the processing of their long-term relevance implements a valuation system that implicates self-relatedness. The neuronal relationship between reward and self-relatedness remains unclear though. Using event-related functional MRI, we investigated whether self-relatedness induces neural activity in the reward system. Self-relatedness induced signal changes in the same regions that were recruited during reward including the bilateral nucleus accumbens (NACC), ventral tegmental area (VTA) and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). The fMRI signal time courses revealed no differences in early BOLD signals between reward and self-relatedness. In contrast, both conditions differed in late BOLD signals with self-relatedness showing higher signal intensity. In sum, our findings indicate sustained recruitment of the reward system during self-relatedness. These findings may contribute to a better understanding of the reward-based nature of our self.