Intracortical Myelin in Youths at Risk for Depression.

Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disability. To understand why depression develops, it is important to distinguish between early neural markers of vulnerability that precede the onset of MDD and features that develop during depression. Recent neuroimaging findings suggest that reduced global and regional intracortical myelination (ICM), especially in the lateral prefrontal cortex, may be associated with depression, but it is unknown whether it is a precursor or a consequence of MDD.

The comorbidity and cognition in multiple sclerosis (CCOMS) neuroimaging protocol: Study rationale, MRI acquisition, and minimal image processing pipelines.

The Comorbidity and Cognition in Multiple Sclerosis (CCOMS) study represents a coordinated effort by a team of clinicians, neuropsychologists, and neuroimaging experts to investigate the neural basis of cognitive changes and their association with comorbidities among persons with multiple sclerosis (MS). The objectives are to determine the relationships among psychiatric (e.g.

The Developmental Brain Age Is Associated With Adversity, Depression, and Functional Outcomes Among Adolescents.

Background: Most psychiatric disorders emerge in the second decade of life. In the present study, we examined whether environmental adversity, developmental antecedents, major depressive disorder, and functional impairment correlate with deviation from normative brain development in adolescence.

Methods: We trained a brain age prediction model using 189 structural magnetic resonance imaging brain features in 1299 typically developing adolescents (age range 9-19 years, mean = 13.

Neural and Behavioral Outcomes Differ Following Equivalent Bouts of Motor Imagery or Physical Practice.

Despite its reported effectiveness for the acquisition of motor skills, we know little about how motor imagery (MI)-based brain activation and performance evolves when MI (the imagined performance of a motor task) is used to learn a complex motor skill compared to physical practice (PP). The current study examined changes in MI-related brain activity and performance driven by an equivalent bout of MI- or PP-based training. Participants engaged in 5 days of either MI or PP of a dart-throwing task.

Reliability of multimodal MRI brain measures in youth at risk for mental illness.

Introduction: A new generation of large-scale studies is using neuroimaging to investigate adolescent brain development across health and disease. However, imaging artifacts such as head motion remain a challenge and may be exacerbated in pediatric clinical samples. In this study, we assessed the scan-rescan reliability of multimodal MRI in a sample of youth enriched for risk of mental illness.

Spatial normalization of multiple sclerosis brain MRI data depends on analysis method and software package.

Background: Spatially normalizing brain MRI data to a template is commonly performed to facilitate comparisons between individuals or groups. However, the presence of multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions and other MS-related brain pathologies may compromise the performance of automated spatial normalization procedures. We therefore aimed to systematically compare five commonly used spatial normalization methods for brain MRI - including linear (affine), and nonlinear MRIStudio (LDDMM), FSL (FNIRT), ANTs (SyN), and SPM (CAT12) algorithms - to evaluate their performance in the presence of MS-related pathologies.

Psychotic symptoms are associated with lower cortical folding in youth at risk for mental illness.

Background: Cortical folding is essential for healthy brain development. Previous studies have found regional reductions in cortical folding in adult patients with psychotic illness. It is unknown whether these neuroanatomical markers are present in youth with subclinical psychotic symptoms.

Neural coding of movement direction in the healthy human brain.

Neurophysiological studies in monkeys show that activity of neurons in primary cortex (M1), pre-motor cortex (PMC), and cerebellum varies systematically with the direction of reaching movements. These neurons exhibit preferred direction tuning, where the level of neural activity is highest when movements are made in the preferred direction (PD), and gets progressively lower as movements are made at increasing degrees of offset from the PD. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging adaptation (fMRI-A) paradigm, we show that PD coding does exist in regions of the human motor system that are homologous to those observed in non-human primates.