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Using An Internal Auditory Stimulus To Activate The Developing Primary Auditory Cortex: A Fetal Fmri Study, Estee Goldberg

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Insight into the rapidly developing brain in utero is scarce. Fetal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique used to gain awareness into the developmental process. Previous auditory task-based fMRI studies employed an external sound stimulus directly on the maternal abdomen. However, there has since been recommendation to cease doing so. We sought to investigate a reliable paradigm to study the development of fetal brain networks and postulate that by using an internal stimulus, such as the mother singing, it would result in activation of the fetal primary auditory cortex. Volunteers carrying singleton fetuses with a gestational age of …