Vascular Underpinnings of Cerebral Lateralisation in the Neonate
Date
2024
Authors
Jansen van Vuuren, A.
Saling, M.
Rogerson, S.
Anderson, P.
Cheong, J.
Solms, M.
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Journal article
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Symmetry, 2024; 16(2):161-1-161-18
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Anica Jansen van Vuuren, Michael Saling, Sheryle Rogerson, Peter Anderson, Jeanie Cheong, and Mark Solms
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Abstract
Traditionally, adult and neonatal cerebral perfusion have been presumed to be symmetrical. Contrary to this, our adult work shows that supra-aortic cerebral supply is systematically biased towards the left, in terms of both vessel geometry and blood flow volumes. Although this asymmetry is meaningfully related to hand preference, the developmental origins of this association remain unknown. Our detailed investigations of the cerebral vasculature confirm analogous asymmetries in term neonates. Specifically, we demonstrate that the structure and flow of neonatal middle cerebral vessels are consistently asymmetric and predominantly left-dominant. Building on our work from the same cohort, we now report further analyses of these new-found asymmetries. Namely, exploring for the first time, the relationship between arterial lateral biases and the neonatal head-turning response—a reliable early behavioural precursor of handedness that shows a systematic rightward bias in the population. Here, we demonstrate a contralateral relationship between vessel morphology and primitive expressions of lateralisation that predate the establishment of definitive handedness in the course of postnatal development. This relationship mimics patterns observed in adults and suggests that lateralising trends in angiogenesis may ultimately influence the emergence of human lateral preferences.
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© 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).