Neonatal brain connectivity outliers identify over forty percent of IQ outliers at 4 years of age.
Wei GaoYuanyuan ChenEmil CorneaBarbara D GoldmanJohn H GilmorePublished in: Brain and behavior (2020)
Considering that postnatal brain growth and various environmental factors likely also contribute to 4YR IQ, the fact that Triple O, based purely on neonatal functional connectivity data, could identify >40% of 4YR IQ outliers is striking. Together with the very high level of specificity, each outlier predicted by Triple O represents a meaningful risk but future efforts are needed to explore ways to identify the rest of outliers. Overall, with no need for training, a high level of robustness, and a minimal requirement on sample size, the proposed Triple O approach demonstrates great potential to predict later outlying IQ performances using neonatal functional connectivity data.