Diagnosis-informed neuro-subtyping reveals subgroups of autism spectrum disorder with reliable and distinct functional connectivity profiles.

Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by heterogeneous symptoms and neurobiological features, which hinders the identification of reliable biomarkers. Until recently, ASD neuro-subtyping has emerged to detect neural features in each subgroup.

Methods: We implemented neuro-subtyping of ASD using a semi-supervised clustering method, HeterogeneitY through DiscRiminative Analysis (HYDRA), guided by the labeling information of ASD/controls, together with a multi-scale dimension reduction method of high-dimensional input features.

Early-stage use of hearing aids preserves auditory cortical structure in children with sensorineural hearing loss.

Hearing is critical to spoken language, cognitive, and social development. Little is known about how early auditory experiences impact the brain structure of children with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. This study examined the influence of hearing aid use and residual hearing on the auditory cortex of children with severe to profound congenital sensorineural hearing loss.

Brain templates for Chinese babies from newborn to three months of age.

The infant brain develops rapidly and this area of research has great clinical implications. Neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and developmental delay have their origins, potentially, in abnormal early brain maturation. Searching for potential early neural markers requires a priori knowledge about infant brain development and anatomy.

Conceptualizing psychological resilience through resting-state functional MRI in a mentally healthy population: a systematic review.

Conceptualizations and operational definitions of psychological resilience vary across resilience neuroimaging studies. Data on the neural features of resilience among healthy individuals has been scarce. Furthermore, findings from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies were inconsistent across studies.

Effects of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex stimulation on network topological attributes in young individuals with high-level perceived stress: A randomized controlled trial.

Individuals with high-level perceived stress are at higher risk of developing a psychiatric disorder. While repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is effective for improving emotional symptoms, there is little evidence of its effect on perceived stress. This randomized sham-controlled trial investigated the effect of rTMS on ameliorating high-level stress and explored the associated changes in brain network activity.

The efficacy of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for young individuals with high-level perceived stress: study protocol for a randomized sham-controlled trial.

Background: High level of perceived stress may result in negative effects both psychologically and physically on individuals and may predispose onset of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and posttraumatic stress disorder. However, there is no suitable intervention for it. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) studies have shown its therapeutic efficacy in treatment resistant patients with stress-related disorders.

Integrative psycho-biophysiological markers in predicting psychological resilience.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and parasympathetic nervous systems have been reported to play important roles in emotion regulation and stress coping. Yet, their direct relationship with psychological resilience remains unclear. These biophysiological features should be considered together with the traditional psychometric properties in studying resilience more comprehensively.

A role of the lateral prefrontal cortex in the congruency sequence effect revealed by transcranial direct current stimulation.

Congruency effect is the increase in response time when relevant and irrelevant cues indicate incongruent rather than congruent responses. The congruency effect is smaller in the trial after an incongruent trial than after a congruent trial: this difference is known as the congruency sequence effect (CSE). Psychophysical and neural studies have suggested that the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) and the medial prefrontal cortex are associated with the CSE.

Autism spectrum disorder risk prediction: A systematic review of behavioral and neural investigations.

A reliable diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficult to make until after toddlerhood. Detection in an earlier age enables early intervention, which is typically more effective. Recent studies of the development of brain and behavior in infants and toddlers have provided important insights in the diagnosis of autism.

-lexical tone association in speakers of a tone language: Direct evidence for the genetic-biasing hypothesis of language evolution.

How language has evolved into more than 7000 varieties today remains a question that puzzles linguists, anthropologists, and evolutionary scientists. The genetic-biasing hypothesis of language evolution postulates that genes and language features coevolve, such that a population that is genetically predisposed to perceiving a particular linguistic feature would tend to adopt that feature in their language. Statistical studies that correlated a large number of genetic variants and linguistic features not only generated this hypothesis but also specifically pinpointed a linkage between and lexical tone.

Gut microbiome and brain functional connectivity in infants-a preliminary study focusing on the amygdala.

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the possibility that microbial communities inhabiting the human gut could affect cognitive development and increase risk for mental illness via the "microbiome-gut-brain axis." Infancy likely represents a critical period for the establishment of these relationships, as it is the most dynamic stage of postnatal brain development and a key period in the maturation of the microbiome. Indeed, recent reports indicate that characteristics of the infant gut microbiome are associated with both temperament and cognitive performance.

The Neuroanatomical Basis of Two Subcomponents of Rumination: A VBM Study.

Rumination is a trait that includes two subcomponents, namely brooding and reflective pondering, respectively construed as maladaptive and adaptive response styles to negative experiences. Existing evidence indicates that rumination in general is associated with structural and functional differences in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). However, conclusive evidence on the specific neural structural basis of each of the two subcomponents is lacking.

Neurodevelopmental changes in the relationship between stress perception and prefrontal-amygdala functional circuitry.

Our brain during distinct developmental phases may show differential responses to perceived psychological stress, yet existing research specifically examining neurodevelopmental changes in stress processing is scarce. To fill in this research gap, this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined the relationship between perceived stress and resting-state neural connectivity patterns among 67 healthy volunteers belonging to three age groups (adolescents, young adults and adults), who were supposed to be at separate neurodevelopmental phases and exhibit different affect regulatory processes in the brain. While the groups showed no significant difference in self-reported general perceived stress levels, the functional connectivity between amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was positively and negatively correlated with perceived stress in adolescents and young adults respectively, while no significant correlations were observed in adults.

Illness, at-risk and resilience neural markers of early-stage bipolar disorder.

Background: Current knowledge on objective and specific neural markers for bipolar risk and resilience-related processes is lacking, partly due to not subdividing high-risk individuals manifesting different levels of subclinical symptoms who possibly possess different levels of resilience.

Methods: We delineated grey matter markers for bipolar illness, genetic high risk (endophenotype) and resilience, through comparing across 42 young non-comorbid bipolar patients, 42 healthy controls, and 72 diagnosis-free, medication-naive high-genetic-risk individuals subdivided into a combined-high-risk group who additionally manifested bipolar risk-relevant subsyndromes (N = 38), and an asymptomatic high-risk group (N = 34). Complementary analyses assessed the additional predictive and classification values of grey matter markers beyond those of clinical scores, through using logistic regression and support vector machine analyses.

Infant Gut Microbiome Associated With Cognitive Development.

Background: Studies in rodents provide compelling evidence that microorganisms inhabiting the gut influence neurodevelopment. In particular, experimental manipulations that alter intestinal microbiota impact exploratory and communicative behaviors and cognitive performance. In humans, the first years of life are a dynamic time in gut colonization and brain development, but little is known about the relationship between these two processes.

Large-scale functional neural network correlates of response inhibition: an fMRI meta-analysis.

An influential hypothesis from the last decade proposed that regions within the right inferior frontal cortex of the human brain were dedicated to supporting response inhibition. There is growing evidence, however, to support an alternative model, which proposes that neural areas associated with specific inhibitory control tasks co-exist as common network mechanisms, supporting diverse cognitive processes. This meta-analysis of 225 studies comprising 323 experiments examined the common and distinct neural correlates of cognitive processes for response inhibition, namely interference resolution, action withholding, and action cancellation.

Salience and default mode network dysregulation in chronic cocaine users predict treatment outcome.

While chronic cocaine use is associated with abnormalities in both brain structure and function within and interactions between regions, previous studies have been limited to interrogating structure and function independently, and the detected neural differences have not been applied to independent samples to assess the clinical relevance of results. We investigated consequences of structural differences on resting-state functional connectivity in cocaine addiction and tested whether resting-state functional connectivity of the identified circuits predict relapse in an independent cohort. Subjects included 64 non-treatment-seeking cocaine users (NTSCUs) and 67 healthy control subjects and an independent treatment-completed cohort (n = 45) of cocaine-dependent individuals scanned at the end of a 30-day residential treatment programme.

Pons to Posterior Cingulate Functional Projections Predict Affective Processing Changes in the Elderly Following Eight Weeks of Meditation Training.

Evidence indicates meditation facilitates affective regulation and reduces negative affect. It also influences resting-state functional connectivity between affective networks and the posterior cingulate (PCC)/precuneus, regions critically implicated in self-referential processing. However, no longitudinal study employing active control group has examined the effect of meditation training on affective processing, PCC/precuneus connectivity, and their association.

Structural and Maturational Covariance in Early Childhood Brain Development.

Brain structural covariance networks (SCNs) composed of regions with correlated variation are altered in neuropsychiatric disease and change with age. Little is known about the development of SCNs in early childhood, a period of rapid cortical growth. We investigated the development of structural and maturational covariance networks, including default, dorsal attention, primary visual and sensorimotor networks in a longitudinal population of 118 children after birth to 2 years old and compared them with intrinsic functional connectivity networks.

Dynamic Development of Regional Cortical Thickness and Surface Area in Early Childhood.

Cortical thickness (CT) and surface area (SA) are altered in many neuropsychiatric disorders and are correlated with cognitive functioning. Little is known about how these components of cortical gray matter develop in the first years of life. We studied the longitudinal development of regional CT and SA expansion in healthy infants from birth to 2 years.

Knowledge-guided robust MRI brain extraction for diverse large-scale neuroimaging studies on humans and non-human primates.

Accurate and robust brain extraction is a critical step in most neuroimaging analysis pipelines. In particular, for the large-scale multi-site neuroimaging studies involving a significant number of subjects with diverse age and diagnostic groups, accurate and robust extraction of the brain automatically and consistently is highly desirable. In this paper, we introduce population-specific probability maps to guide the brain extraction of diverse subject groups, including both healthy and diseased adult human populations, both developing and aging human populations, as well as non-human primates.

FMEM: functional mixed effects modeling for the analysis of longitudinal white matter Tract data.

Many longitudinal imaging studies have collected repeated diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging data to understand white matter maturation and structural connectivity pattern in normal controls and diseased subjects. There is an urgent demand for the development of statistical methods for the analysis of diffusion properties along fiber tracts and clinical data obtained from longitudinal studies. Jointly analyzing repeated fiber-tract diffusion properties and covariates (e.

Impact of sex and gonadal steroids on neonatal brain structure.

There are numerous reports of sexual dimorphism in brain structure in children and adults, but data on sex differences in infancy are extremely limited. Our primary goal was to identify sex differences in neonatal brain structure. Our secondary goal was to explore whether brain structure was related to androgen exposure or sensitivity.