Fig. 1.
Graphical representation of preprocessing steps. After acquiring fetal resting-state functional MRI data in N = 105 fetuses, a data-driven functional parcellation strategy was used to divide a 32-week template fetal brain into 197 similarly sized regions of interest (ROIs; panel A). Functional connectivity strength between every pair of ROIs was then computed to construct connectivity matrices for every fetus (panel B). In a final step, graph theoretical metrics, degree and betweenness centrality, were computed from connectivity matrices to identify functional hubs in the fetal network (panel C).