#439 - 🔵 [PAS 2026] - Are Babies on Dialysis at Much Higher Risk for Brain Injury Than We Thought?

Dr. Melissa Zhou, researcher at the Developing Brain Institute at Children's National, joins Daphna to discuss functional MRI and what it reveals about how preterm brains are building connections during the NICU stay. Using functional connectivity — measuring how different brain regions communicate with each other over time — her team compares preterm infants to healthy in utero fetuses scanned as early as 20 weeks, finding that the ex utero preterm brain actually looks more mature in terms of connectivity, suggesting the NICU environment itself accelerates certain aspects of brain development. She shares why extremely and very preterm infants show a distinctly different pattern of connectivity compared to moderately preterm babies who seem to bounce back more quickly, and why the team's next goal is to use these early functional findings to predict which babies will struggle with neurodevelopmental outcomes at 36 months — and which ones will be just fine.