The Developing Human Connectome Project has created a large open science resource which provides researchers with data for investigating typical and atypical brain development across the perinatal period. It has collected 1228 multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain datasets from 1173 fetal and/or neonatal participants, together with collateral demographic, clinical, family, neurocognitive and genomic data from 1173 participants, together with collateral demographic, clinical, family, neurocognitive and genomic data. All subjects were studied in utero and/or soon after birth on a single MRI scanner using specially developed scanning sequences which included novel motion-tolerant imaging methods. Imaging data are complemented by rich demographic, clinical, neurodevelopmental, and genomic information. The project is now releasing a large set of neonatal data; fetal data will be described and released separately. This release includes scans from 783 infants of whom: 583 were healthy infants born at term; as well as preterm infants; and infants at high risk of atypical neurocognitive development. Many infants were imaged more than once to provide longitudinal data, and the total number of datasets being released is 887. We now describe the dHCP image acquisition and processing protocols, summarize the available imaging and collateral data, and provide information on how the data can be accessed.

No abstract

Features of brain asymmetry have been implicated in a broad range of cognitive processes; however, their origins are still poorly understood. Using a new left-right symmetric, spatiotemporal cortical surface atlas, we investigated cortical asymmetries in 442 healthy term-born neonates using structural and functional magnetic resonance images from the Developing Human Connectome Project. Cortical asymmetries observed in the term cohort were contextualised in two ways: by comparing them against cortical asymmetries observed in 103 preterm neonates scanned at term-equivalent age, and by comparing structural asymmetries against those observed in 1110 healthy young adults from the Human Connectome Project. Our results demonstrate that the neonatal cortex is markedly asymmetric in both structure and function, and while associations with preterm birth and biological sex were minimal, significant differences exist between birth and adulthood. Although these changes may represent experience-dependent developmental milestones, longitudinal studies across the lifespan are required to fully address these hypotheses. developing human connectome project | cortical surface | asymmetry | resting-state networks | preterm birth