Associations Between Microstructural Properties of Early Prefrontal Cortex and Infant Emotionality

High infant negative emotionality (NE) is associated with early affective disorders and psychopathology later in life. Prefrontal cortical (PFC) regions have distinct roles in emotional regulation and undergo critical development in infancy. Yet, little is known regarding PFC microstructural underpinnings of early emotional reactivity. Neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) can be used for studying intracortical neurite density index (NDI) and orientation dispersion index (ODI). We therefore aimed to identify relationships between these microstructural properties of PFC subregions with infant NE at 3 months.