Josephine Heine

The effects of a second pregnancy on women’s brain structure and function - Nature Communications Extending their previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, the authors show that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks.

Extending previous findings of brain changes in a first pregnancy, a study in Nature Communications shows that a second pregnancy uniquely alters women’s brains, involving both a further fine-tuning of first-pregnancy effects and distinct changes in other networks. #Neuroskyence #medsky 🧪

Do patients with AQP4-IgG+ #NMOSD have specific volumetric brain and spinal cord changes that could inform MRI-guided disease monitoring?

@josephineheine.bsky.social and colleagues conducted a Systematic Review & Meta-Analysis to find out:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Grateful to my fantastic co-lead Claudia Chien, as well as all authors of the included studies whose support - and willingness to take the time and share additional data - made this project possible.

#rarediseases #imaging #mri #neurology #neuroradiology #brain #womenshealth #prospero

Potential sources of bias were accounted for:

🧹 Small study effects
🧹 Duplicate reporting from the same cohorts
🧹 Different segmentation approaches
🧹 Differences in MRI scanners
🧹 Technological advances (“year of publication” as proxy)
🧹 Publication bias
🧹 Citation bias

When we systematically reviewed regional differences (VBM), reduced gray matter volume was observed in the bilateral thalamus (⩽69%) and occipital (44%), frontal (27%), and temporal cortices (27%).

✔️ A large effect for reduced mean upper cervical cord area (MUCCA, g=-0.99)

❌ No conclusive evidence for volume segmentations of the white matter and thalamus (no/small effects, varying heterogeneity)

We screened more than 1,800 studies published between 2006-2025 and found the following overarching trends (compared to healthy participants):

✔️ A moderate effect for reduced whole brain (g=-0.61) and gray matter volume (g=-0.40) across studies

NMOSD with antibodies against AQP4 is a rare and severe neurological disease that mainly affects women (9:1) and can cause vision impairment, motor symptoms, fatigue, pain, and cognitive problems.

Brain volumetry and spinal cord imaging in patients with AQP4-IgG+ NMOSD—a systematic review and meta-analysis - Josephine Heine, Claudia Chien, 2025 Background: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is often used to evaluate disease-related brain changes in patients with aquaporin-4-IgG seropositive neuromyelitis...

📣 New publication: How are brain volumes affected in patients with AQP4-IgG+ NMOSD?

It’s a magnificent Monday to share our new #metaanalysis on structural #MRI findings in #NMOSD in @taneuroldisord.bsky.social.

🧵 A thread.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Why do women often have more severe strokes than men? 🧠
Dr. Farida Sohrabji joins Dr. @liisagalea.bsky.social on Women’s Health Interrupted to unpack sex differences, estrogens, & gut health in stroke.
ow.ly/zFSJ50XjGLT
#WomensHealthInterrupted #Stroke

JAMA Insights: How to Communicate Medical Numbers. It outlines recommendations for conveying risk, adjusting numerators, communicating probability changes, using visualizations, and providing context, with examples of problematic and preferred communication styles.

Clinicians can enhance patient understanding by using numerical data instead of verbal probabilities, consistent denominators, absolute risk comparisons, and clear context for unfamiliar data types.

ja.ma/4pAC3zi

Advancing multiple sclerosis management in older adults Nature Reviews Neurology, Published online: 23 July 2025; doi:10.1038/s41582-025-01115-5Approximately half of the people currently with multiple sclerosis (MS) are ≥50 years of age, yet guidelines for management of MS in older age are lacking. This Consensus statement presents the outcomes of an International Advisory Committee on Clinical Trials (IACCT) in MS workshop on ageing and MS, including recommendations for advancing research, care and awareness.

ICYMI: New online! Advancing multiple sclerosis management in older adults

Direct interactions between the human insula and hippocampus during memory encoding - Nature Neuroscience The hippocampus and insula communicate when processing emotional memories. Discrete sites in the human insular cortex showed changes that predicted later memory recall, while others responded to emoti...

Discrete sites in the human insular cortex showed changes of ac vity that predicted later memory recall, while others responded to emo onal content. Smula on of memoryrelated sites showed direct influence over the hippocampus

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Benchmarking methods for mapping functional connectivity in the brain - Nature Methods In this Analysis, Liu et al. benchmark more than 200 pairwise statistics for functional brain connectivity in tasks such as hub mapping, distance relationships, structure–function coupling and behavio...

An Analysis of 200 pairwise statistics for functional brain connectivity in tasks such as hub mapping, distance relationships, structure-function coupling and behavior prediction highlights their effectiveness for neurophysiological applications.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

RELEASE THE KRAKEN(CODER)!
Ever struggle deciding which connectome pipeline to use or want to map between structure and function? Our multi-modal connectome mapping and fusion tool-the Krakencoder-can help! Brilliant Keith Jamison led this work, code available! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project: an open dataset for studying brain-behavior relationships in psychiatry - Scientific Data Scientific Data - The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project: an open dataset for studying brain-behavior relationships in psychiatry

🚨 Dataset & Manuscript alert! 🚨 The Transdiagnostic Connectome Project (TCP) manuscript is now available @natureportfolio.nature.com Scientific Data! 🎉

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧵1👇

Thalamic atrophy in multiple sclerosis is associated with tract disconnection and altered microglia - Acta Neuropathologica Thalamic atrophy already occurs in the early stages of multiple sclerosis (MS) and continues progressively throughout the disease. Demyelination is one of the main pathological hallmarks of MS and yet...

Thalamic atrophy in multiple sclerosis is associated with tract disconnection and altered microglia link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Synapse vulnerability and resilience across the clinical spectrum of dementias Nature Reviews Neurology, Published online: 22 May 2025; doi:10.1038/s41582-025-01094-7In this Review, Taddei and Duff consider the concepts of synapse vulnerability and resilience, and how an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie these states could identify novel strategies to mitigate the cognitive dysfunction associated with dementias.

ICYMI: New online! Synapse vulnerability and resilience across the clinical spectrum of dementias

The history and future of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging - Nature This Review provides an overview of the history of resting-state functional MRI research, which has helped to reveal the spatiotemporal organization of the brain, and discusses how it can contribute f...

When I first started working with resting state fMRI as a postdoc, there was a lot of skepticism about what we could learn from it. 20 years later, it's hard to imagine where the field of neuroscience would be without it. Here's a summary 🧠 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

⭐ preprint ⭐

In-vivo evidence for increased tau deposition in temporal lobe epilepsy

➡️ Using [¹⁸F]MK-6240 PET, we show increased tau in young and middle aged TLE
➡️ Tau aggregation potential mechanism of disease progression & cognitive decline
➡️ pdf bit.ly/4mmlTYH

by Raul Cruces & a super team

Astrocytes have long been conceived as passive support player cells in the brain. But today @science.org (via 3 reports) they got a big upgrade for their active role in neuromodulation and control of brain function
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This latest review discusses recent advancements in research and highlights the importance of study designs and personalised care that take these differences into account.

Thanks for the fantastic collaboration and interesting discussions to @jelenabrasanac.bsky.social and Claudia Chien!

Although women are disproportionately affected, research on how sex affects disease trajectories and related symptoms is still in its infancy. Here, we examine sex-specific differences in #brain pathology, #cognitive symptoms, and #neuropsychiatric comorbidities across the #lifespan.

A screenshot of the first page of the review article "A Review of Sex Differences in Neurodegeneration and Psychological Comorbidities in Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders" by Brasanac, Heine, and Chien

📣 New publication 📣

Our latest review article explores the role sex differences play in neuroimaging, disease progression and clinical outcomes of #multiplesclerosis and related diseases.

- with @jelenabrasanac.bsky.social and Claudia Chien

doi.org/10.1159/0005...

🧵 #ms #nmosd #womenshealth

🎨🧑‍🎨 Looking for a tool to visualize subcortical/thalamic data in 2D? Check out this python-based package I put together (subcortex-visualization on PyPI), plus a guide for creating your own custom atlas meshes and vector graphics! All feedback/tips welcome 😊

anniegbryant.github.io/subcortex_vi...

Human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome - Nature Neuroscience Sun et al. report human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome in 33,250 individuals, which highlights critical growth milestones and distinct maturation patterns and offers a normative...

Task-free functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data from 33,250 individuals at 32 weeks of postmenstrual age to 80 years from 132 global sites 🧠🧪

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thank you for the list! I'd like to join 🙋🏻‍♀️

TSPO-PET Reveals Higher Inflammation in White Matter Disrupted by Paramagnetic Rim Lesions in Multiple Sclerosis Objective: To explore whether the inflammatory activity is higher in white matter (WM) tracts disrupted by paramagnetic rim lesions (PRLs) and if inflammation in PRL-disrupted WM tracts is associated ...

Very excited to share our new preprint that shows the increased neuroinflammatory activity on the white matter (WM) tracts disrupted by the paramagnetic rim lesions (PRLs) in people with multiple sclerosis (MS). shorturl.at/CXrWQ (1/8)

Awesome new preprint combining PET and our WM disconnectome tool NeMo to explore inflammation patterns in MS!

Would you mind adding me to the list? Happy to connect.