Typical and disrupted brain circuitry for conscious awareness in full-term and preterm infants

One of the great frontiers of consciousness science is understanding how early consciousness arises in the development of the human infant. The reciprocal relationship between the default mode network (DMN) and frontoparietal networks -- the dorsal attention network (DAN) and executive control network (ECN) -- is thought to facilitate integration of information across the brain and its availability for conscious access to a wide set of mental operations. It remains unknown whether the brain mechanism of conscious awareness is instated in infants from birth. To address this gap, we asked what the impact of prematurity and neonate age is on the development the default mode and fronto-parietal networks, and of their reciprocal relationship. To address these questions, we used the Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP), a unique Open Science project which provides a large sample of neonatal functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data with high temporal and spatial resolution. Resting state fMRI data for full-term neonates (N = 282, age 41.2 w {+/-} 12 d), and preterm neonates scanned at term-equivalent age (TEA) (N = 73, 40.9 w {+/-} 14.5 d), or before TEA (N = 73, 34.6 w {+/-} 13.4 d) were obtained from the dHCP, and for a reference adult group (N = 176, 22 - 36 years), from the Human Connectome Project. For the first time, we show that the reciprocal relationship between the DMN and DAN was present at full-term birth or TEA. Although different from the adult networks, the DMN, DAN and ECN were present as distinct networks at full-term birth or TEA, but premature birth disrupted network development. By contrast, neonates before TEA showed dramatic underdevelopment of high-order networks. Only the DAN was present as a distinct network and the reciprocal network relationship was not yet formed. Our results suggest that, at full-term birth or by term-equivalent age, infants possess key features of the neural circuitry that enables integration of information across diverse sensory and high-order functional modules, giving rise to conscious access. Conversely, they suggest that this brain infrastructure is not present before infants reach term-equivalent age. These findings improve understanding of the ontogeny of high-order network dynamics that support conscious awareness, and of their disruption by premature birth.