Functional imaging of the prenatal brain

Abstract

In utero magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has significantly increased our knowledge on early fetal brain development. Especially the possibility to expand standard clinical applications of imaging structure to functional imaging has increased the opportunities but also introduced major challenges in the field regarding motion artifacts, group analysis, and generating structural templates. This chapter gives an overview on fetal functional imaging from stimulation to resting-state studies and discusses critical challenges in data analysis. Fetal functional MRI is a powerful approach investigating brain development in utero and has the potential of generating biomarkers for developmental prognosis in the future.