Publications by authors named "M M Vandewouw"
With brain structure and function undergoing complex changes throughout childhood and adolescence, age is a critical consideration in neuroimaging studies, particularly for those of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions. However, despite the increasing use of large, consortium-based datasets to examine brain structure and function in neurotypical and neurodivergent populations, it is unclear whether age-related changes are consistent between datasets and whether inconsistencies related to differences in sample characteristics, such as demographics and phenotypic features, exist. To address this, we built models of age-related changes of brain structure (regional cortical thickness and regional surface area; N = 1218) and function (resting-state functional connectivity strength; N = 1254) in two neurodiverse datasets: the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Network and the Healthy Brain Network.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNeurophysiological signals, comprised of both periodic (e.g., oscillatory) and aperiodic (e.
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- Early-life nutrition, particularly the intake of mother's milk, plays a significant role in the brain development of preterm-born children, specifically in areas related to processing speed.
- A study involving 40 five-year-old children who were born preterm showed that while general macronutrient intake had no impact, higher consumption of mother's milk was linked to increased volumes in critical brain regions.
- The findings suggest that mother's milk may support better processing speed by enhancing brain structure in these vulnerable children, highlighting the need for further research on nutritional strategies to improve outcomes for preterm infants.
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- Individuals with congenital heart disease (CHD) face a heightened risk for neurodevelopmental impairments, and understanding this relationship could benefit from data-driven approaches.
- Utilizing data from the Pediatric Cardiac Genomics Consortium, researchers analyzed brain structure using MRI to identify subgroups of individuals with CHD, focusing on variations related to cardiac lesions and language ability.
- The study also examined white matter connectivity through diffusion MRI, revealing that rare genetic variants significantly influence visual-motor functions, highlighting the intricate links between cardiac conditions, genomic differences, and brain development in CHD patients.
The cerebellum, through its connectivity with the cerebral cortex, plays an integral role in regulating cognitive and affective processes, and its dysregulation can result in neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD)-related behavioural deficits. Identifying cerebellar-cerebral functional connectivity (FC) profiles in children with NDDs can provide insight into common connectivity profiles and their correlation to NDD-related behaviours. 479 participants from the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Disorders (POND) network (typically developing = 93, Autism Spectrum Disorder = 172, Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder = 161, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder = 53, mean age = 12.
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