We think of white matter as the highways of the brain. But when we followed development along those highways, we were surprised. The journey is more complex than we thought. My final PhD paper, “Two Axes of White Matter Development”, is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! 🛣️🧠✨
🔗 bit.ly/wm2axes
Excited to share a new preprint that examines how adversity exposure across development is associated with subcortical-cortical structure-function coupling and youth mental health! 🧠
Thread below: 🧵⬇
With special thanks to my incredibly amazing PhD adviser @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social ✨🤩🚀!!!
@apmackey.bsky.social @misicbata.bsky.social Tyler M. Moore, David R. Roalf, Russell T. Shinohara @valeriejsydnor.bsky.social @tientong.bsky.social Fang-Cheng Yeh @russpoldrack.org @cieslakmatt.bsky.social
Huge thank you to my coauthors @goliashf.bsky.social @audreycluo.bsky.social Maggie K. Pecsok @tsalo.bsky.social @aarona-b.bsky.social @danisbassett.bsky.social Margaret E. Gardner, Raquel E. Gur, Ruben C. Gur
🧠🧐 By revealing how tracts are anchored within the cortical hierarchy and how this determines their cognitive and biological roles, we hope this work opens new paths for studying brain organization and development!
💡Overall: We propose a cortex-anchored framework for understanding canonical white matter tracts that goes beyond classic categories. A tract’s position in the cortical hierarchy shapes the functions it supports, the biology of its endpoints, and its variation across people.
#6: A tract’s position in the hierarchy tracks real variation across people.
In a large developmental sample, tracts that span more of the hierarchy showed greater developmental changes and stronger links to executive function.
#5: Cortical biology shapes tract function.
Tracts staying within a hierarchical level connect regions with similar biological properties. Tracts crossing the hierarchy link biologically heterogeneous areas and support broader functions—acting as anatomical bridges across cortical environments.
#4: Tracts vary in cognitive diversity.
Some are specialists (optic radiation, fornix), while others are generalists supporting many functions (hi IFOF and ILF 👋). And importantly, tracts that span more of the cortical hierarchy are more cognitively diverse.
#3: Tracts have unique cognitive profiles.
We mapped each tract’s cognitive profile, confirming classic roles (arcuate ➡️ language; CST ➡️ movement) and revealing new ones, including empathy for the right arcuate.
#2: The layout of white matter tracts aligns with the layout of cognitive functions.
Multivariate analyses showed that tracts and cognitive functions align along a shared spatial axis. Dorsolateral-connecting tracts ➡️ action functions. Ventromedial-connecting tracts ➡️ affective functions.
#1: Tracts differ a lot in how much of the cortical hierarchy they span.
Some stick to nearby, similarly ranked regions, while others stretch across long distances to link distant points on the S-A axis. So a tract’s spatial span is tightly related to how much of the hierarchy it crosses.
To do this, we used population-level maps linking 52 WM tracts to the cortical surface (bit.ly/4aNI4DJ). This mapping allowed us to place tracts within the cortical hierarchy and characterize their associated cognitive functions and neurobiological properties–leading to SIX exciting findings!
Higher-order cognitive functions rely on various brain regions spread across this S-A hierarchy.
So we asked: How are anatomical tracts positioned along this cortical hierarchy, and does this wiring shape the cognitive roles each tract plays? 🤔
Long-range WM tracts help distant brain regions communicate, but we still don’t fully understand how their cortical connections support different aspects of cognition. A key clue is the sensorimotor-to-association (S-A) axis, a major organizing gradient of the cortex (bit.ly/48Fb7rL).
Ever wondered how white matter tracts actually map onto the cortical hierarchy and cognition—beyond the usual “projection vs association” labels?
Our new preprint tackles exactly that! 🧠✨ doi.org/10.64898/202...
Thread below 🧵
Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org!
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️
#PsychSciSky #DevPsy
🧵👇
Excited to share that our new review, "Depression as a disease of white matter network disruption: Learning from Multiple Sclerosis," is out now in Biological Psychiatry! We propose MS as a powerful model for studying how white matter network changes contribute to depression.
#PenNLINC is recruiting a clinical coordinator / lab manager!!! Looking for someone who is good with both people + code, wants to learn to acquire + analyze imaging data. Alumni in this role have written 1st author papers + gone to top grad programs.
Website: www.pennlinc.io
Job: bit.ly/4ojvCir
Happy New Preprint Friday!* Thrilled to share new results in collab with Sarah Lichenstein & @yiplab.bsky.social showing our brain's functional connections reflect the environments we grow up in!
tinyurl.com/exposomeConnectivity
#neuroskyence #PsychSciSky #DevPsy #cognition
*can this be a thing??
🧠I am excited to announce that our manuscript introducing a new data resource – PennLEAD (Penn Longitudinal Executive functioning in Adolescent Development) – is now available on bioRxiv. Below are some details highlighting our data resource🧵funded by NIMH R01MH113550
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Happy to share our review "Investigating hierarchical critical periods in human neurodevelopment” in @npp-journal.bsky.social! We examine neurobiological, environmental & behavioral evidence for human critical periods in sensory and association cortex +discuss new research directions rdcu.be/eMkVU 🧵
After years of development and testing, we are happy to present our work in "Diffusion MRI Processing in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study: Innovations and Applications"! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... A thread:
I’m excited to share my new paper “From Billing Codes to Breakthroughs: Filtering Signal From Noise in Electronic Medical Records–Based Research” out in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences now: doi.org/10.1176/appi...!
New preprint from stellar IRTG PhD student Amelie Rauland + team on white matter bundle reconstruction! Shows that WM bundles can be reliably extracted from simple 32-direction dMRI & features predict cognition - huge potential for legacy and clinical data. Thread 👇
www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
CONGRATS TO DOCTOR @audreycluo.bsky.social !!! Last week, Dr. Luo knocked our collective socks off with a thesis defense for the ages. Her presentation on "Axes of Hierarchical Brain Development" was magnificent -- beautiful science, presented in an incredibly accessible and engaging way. WOO!!!!
Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...
Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️
How does the human brain coordinate hierarchical cortical development? Our work in Nature Neuroscience identifies a role for thalamocortical structural connectivity in the expression of hierarchical periods of cortical plasticity & environmental receptivity in youth 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Dreaming of a dataset that tracks mood, sleep & activity to better understand affective instability (AI)…AND paired with advanced MRI? 🤯
Check out our new bioRxiv preprint for a 13–23 y/o community sample (n=10 and growing!) with multi-echo fMRI, EMA & actigraphy: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
