Resilient functioning is associated with altered structural brain network topology in adolescents exposed to childhood adversity.

Childhood adversity is one of the strongest predictors of adolescent mental illness. Therefore, it is critical that the mechanisms that aid resilient functioning in individuals exposed to childhood adversity are better understood. Here, we examined whether resilient functioning was related to structural brain network topology.

Pediatric epilepsy surgery from 2000 to 2018: Changes in referral and surgical volumes, patient characteristics, genetic testing, and postsurgical outcomes.

Objective: Neurosurgery is a safe and effective form of treatment for select children with drug-resistant epilepsy. Still, there is concern that it remains underutilized, and that seizure freedom rates have not improved over time. We investigated referral and surgical practices, patient characteristics, and postoperative outcomes over the past two decades.

Predicting seizure outcome after epilepsy surgery: Do we need more complex models, larger samples, or better data?

Objective: The accurate prediction of seizure freedom after epilepsy surgery remains challenging. We investigated if (1) training more complex models, (2) recruiting larger sample sizes, or (3) using data-driven selection of clinical predictors would improve our ability to predict postoperative seizure outcome using clinical features. We also conducted the first substantial external validation of a machine learning model trained to predict postoperative seizure outcome.

Open and reproducible neuroimaging: From study inception to publication.

Empirical observations of how labs conduct research indicate that the adoption rate of open practices for transparent, reproducible, and collaborative science remains in its infancy. This is at odds with the overwhelming evidence for the necessity of these practices and their benefits for individual researchers, scientific progress, and society in general. To date, information required for implementing open science practices throughout the different steps of a research project is scattered among many different sources.

Improved Interpretability of Brain-Behavior CCA With Domain-Driven Dimension Reduction.

Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) has been widely applied to study correlations between neuroimaging data and behavioral data. Practical use of CCA typically requires dimensionality reduction with, for example, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), however, this can result in CCA components that are difficult to interpret. In this paper, we introduce a Domain-driven Dimension Reduction (DDR) method, reducing the dimensionality of the original datasets and combining human knowledge of the structure of the variables studied.

Centering inclusivity in the design of online conferences-An OHBM-Open Science perspective.

As the global health crisis unfolded, many academic conferences moved online in 2020. This move has been hailed as a positive step towards inclusivity in its attenuation of economic, physical, and legal barriers and effectively enabled many individuals from groups that have traditionally been underrepresented to join and participate. A number of studies have outlined how moving online made it possible to gather a more global community and has increased opportunities for individuals with various constraints, e.

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Connectivity Accurately Distinguishes Cases With Psychotic Disorders From Healthy Controls, Based on Cortical Features Associated With Brain Network Development.

Background: Machine learning (ML) can distinguish cases with psychotic disorder from healthy controls based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, but it is not yet clear which MRI metrics are the most informative for case-control ML, or how ML algorithms relate to the underlying biology.

Methods: We analyzed multimodal MRI data from 2 independent case-control studies of psychotic disorders (cases, n = 65, 28; controls, n = 59, 80) and compared ML accuracy across 5 selected MRI metrics from 3 modalities. Cortical thickness, mean diffusivity, and fractional anisotropy were estimated at each of 308 cortical regions, as well as functional and structural connectivity between each pair of regions.

A neuroimaging biomarker for striatal dysfunction in schizophrenia.

Mounting evidence suggests that function and connectivity of the striatum is disrupted in schizophrenia. We have developed a new hypothesis-driven neuroimaging biomarker for schizophrenia identification, prognosis and subtyping based on functional striatal abnormalities (FSA). FSA scores provide a personalized index of striatal dysfunction, ranging from normal to highly pathological.

Schizotypy-Related Magnetization of Cortex in Healthy Adolescence Is Colocated With Expression of Schizophrenia-Related Genes.

Background: Genetic risk is thought to drive clinical variation on a spectrum of schizophrenia-like traits, but the underlying changes in brain structure that mechanistically link genomic variation to schizotypal experience and behavior are unclear.

Methods: We assessed schizotypy using a self-reported questionnaire and measured magnetization transfer as a putative microstructural magnetic resonance imaging marker of intracortical myelination in 68 brain regions in 248 healthy young people (14-25 years of age). We used normative adult brain gene expression data and partial least squares analysis to find the weighted gene expression pattern that was most colocated with the cortical map of schizotypy-related magnetization.

Conservative and disruptive modes of adolescent change in human brain functional connectivity.

Adolescent changes in human brain function are not entirely understood. Here, we used multiecho functional MRI (fMRI) to measure developmental change in functional connectivity (FC) of resting-state oscillations between pairs of 330 cortical regions and 16 subcortical regions in 298 healthy adolescents scanned 520 times. Participants were aged 14 to 26 y and were scanned on 1 to 3 occasions at least 6 mo apart.

Shifts in myeloarchitecture characterise adolescent development of cortical gradients.

We studied an accelerated longitudinal cohort of adolescents and young adults (n = 234, two time points) to investigate dynamic reconfigurations in myeloarchitecture. Intracortical profiles were generated using magnetization transfer (MT) data, a myelin-sensitive magnetic resonance imaging contrast. Mixed-effect models of depth specific intracortical profiles demonstrated two separate processes i) overall increases in MT, and ii) flattening of the MT profile related to enhanced signal in mid-to-deeper layers, especially in heteromodal and unimodal association cortices.

Cortical patterning of abnormal morphometric similarity in psychosis is associated with brain expression of schizophrenia-related genes.

Schizophrenia has been conceived as a disorder of brain connectivity, but it is unclear how this network phenotype is related to the underlying genetics. We used morphometric similarity analysis of MRI data as a marker of interareal cortical connectivity in three prior case-control studies of psychosis: in total, = 185 cases and = 227 controls. Psychosis was associated with globally reduced morphometric similarity in all three studies.

Morphometric Similarity Networks Detect Microscale Cortical Organization and Predict Inter-Individual Cognitive Variation.

Macroscopic cortical networks are important for cognitive function, but it remains challenging to construct anatomically plausible individual structural connectomes from human neuroimaging. We introduce a new technique for cortical network mapping based on inter-regional similarity of multiple morphometric parameters measured using multimodal MRI. In three cohorts (two human, one macaque), we find that the resulting morphometric similarity networks (MSNs) have a complex topological organization comprising modules and high-degree hubs.

Structural covariance networks are coupled to expression of genes enriched in supragranular layers of the human cortex.

Complex network topology is characteristic of many biological systems, including anatomical and functional brain networks (connectomes). Here, we first constructed a structural covariance network from MRI measures of cortical thickness on 296 healthy volunteers, aged 14-24 years. Next, we designed a new algorithm for matching sample locations from the Allen Brain Atlas to the nodes of the SCN.

Adolescent Tuning of Association Cortex in Human Structural Brain Networks.

Motivated by prior data on local cortical shrinkage and intracortical myelination, we predicted age-related changes in topological organization of cortical structural networks during adolescence. We estimated structural correlation from magnetic resonance imaging measures of cortical thickness at 308 regions in a sample of N = 297 healthy participants, aged 14-24 years. We used a novel sliding-window analysis to measure age-related changes in network attributes globally, locally and in the context of several community partitions of the network.

Neuroscientific insights into the development of analogical reasoning.

Analogical reasoning, or the ability to find correspondences between entities based on shared relationships, supports knowledge acquisition. As such, the development of this ability during childhood is thought to promote learning. Here, we sought to better understand the mechanisms by which analogical reasoning about semantic relations improves over childhood and adolescence (e.

Gene transcription profiles associated with inter-modular hubs and connection distance in human functional magnetic resonance imaging networks.

Human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain networks have a complex topology comprising integrative components, e.g. long-distance inter-modular edges, that are theoretically associated with higher biological cost.

Adolescence is associated with genomically patterned consolidation of the hubs of the human brain connectome.

How does human brain structure mature during adolescence? We used MRI to measure cortical thickness and intracortical myelination in 297 population volunteers aged 14-24 y old. We found and replicated that association cortical areas were thicker and less myelinated than primary cortical areas at 14 y. However, association cortex had faster rates of shrinkage and myelination over the course of adolescence.

Clinical characteristics associated with the prescribing of SSRI medication in adolescents with major unipolar depression.

Unipolar major depressions (MD) emerge markedly during adolescence. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK recommends psychological therapies, with accompanying selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) prescribed in severe cases only. Here, we seek to determine the extent and rationale of SSRI prescribing in adolescent MD before entering a randomised clinical trial.

Functional MRI of emotional memory in adolescent depression.

Introduction: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of disease burden worldwide. Mood-congruent biases in memory tasks are frequently reported in MDD patients, with facilitated memory for negative stimuli. Most functional MRI studies to date have examined the neural correlates of these biases in depressed adults, with fewer studies in adolescents with MDD.

Aberrant brain responses to emotionally valent words is normalised after cognitive behavioural therapy in female depressed adolescents.

Background: Depression in adolescence is debilitating with high recurrence in adulthood, yet its pathophysiological mechanism remains enigmatic. To examine the interaction between emotion, cognition and treatment, functional brain responses to sad and happy distractors in an affective go/no-go task were explored before and after Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) in depressed female adolescents, and healthy participants.

Methods: Eighty-two Depressed and 24 healthy female adolescents, aged 12-17 years, performed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) affective go/no-go task at baseline.

Fronto-Parietal Network Reconfiguration Supports the Development of Reasoning Ability.

The goal of this fMRI study was to examine how well developmental improvements in reasoning ability can be explained by changes in functional connectivity between specific nodes in prefrontal and parietal cortices. To this end, we examined connectivity within the lateral fronto-parietal network (LFPN) and its relation to reasoning ability in 132 children and adolescents aged 6-18 years, 56 of whom were scanned twice over the course of 1.5 years.

Adolescents with current major depressive disorder show dissimilar patterns of age-related differences in ACC and thalamus.

Objective: There is little understanding of the neural system abnormalities subserving adolescent major depressive disorder (MDD). In a cross-sectional study we compare currently unipolar depressed with healthy adolescents to determine if group differences in grey matter volume (GMV) were influenced by age and illness severity.

Method: Structural neuroimaging was performed on 109 adolescents with current MDD and 36 healthy controls, matched for age, gender, and handedness.

The effects of puberty on white matter development in boys.

Neuroimaging studies demonstrate considerable changes in white matter volume and microstructure during adolescence. Most studies have focused on age-related effects, whilst puberty-related changes are not well understood. Using diffusion tensor imaging and tract-based spatial statistics, we investigated the effects of pubertal status on white matter mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA) in 61 males aged 12.