Clinical Activity and Quality of Life Indices Are Valid Across Ulcerative Colitis But Not Crohn’s Disease Phenotypes

Background Clinical activity and quality of life (QOL) indices assess disease activity in Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). However, a paucity of data exists on the validity of these indices according to disease characteristics. Aims To examine the correlation between QOL and clinical activity indices and endoscopic disease activity according to disease characteristics. Methods We used a prospective registry to identify CD and UC patients ≥18 years old with available information on Short Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire scores (SIBDQ), Harvey–Bradshaw Index (HBI) and simple endoscopic scores for CD (SES-CD), and Simple Clinical Colitis Activity Index (SCCAI) and Mayo endoscopic score for UC. We used Spearman rank correlations to calculate correlations between indices and Fisher transformation to compare correlations across disease characteristics. Results Among 282 CD patients, we observed poor correlation between clinical activity and QOL indices to SES-CD with no differences in correlation according to disease characteristics. Conversely, among 226 UC patients, clinical activity and QOL had good correlation to Mayo endoscopic score (r = 0.55 and −0.56, respectively) with better correlations observed with left-sided versus extensive colitis (r = 0.73 vs. 0.45, p = 0.005) and shorter duration of disease (r = 0.61 vs. 0.37, p = 0.04). Conclusions Our data suggest good correlation between SCCAI and endoscopic disease activity in UC, particularly in left-sided disease. Poor correlations between HBI or SIBDQ and SES-CD appear to be consistent across different disease phenotypes.American Gastroenterological Associatio

Interindividual Variability of Functional Connectivity in Awake and Anesthetized Rhesus Macaque Monkeys

International audienc

Characterizing the impact of adversity, abuse, and neglect on adolescent amygdala resting-state functional connectivity

18 pagesCharacterizing typologies of childhood adversity may inform the development of risk profiles and corresponding interventions aimed at mitigating its lifelong consequences. A neurobiological grounding of these typologies requires systematic comparisons of neural structure and function among individuals with different exposure histories. Using seed-to-whole brain analyses, this study examined associations between childhood adversity and amygdala resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) in adolescents aged 11–19 years across three independent studies (N = 223; 127 adversity group) in both general and dimensional models of adversity (comparing abuse and neglect). In a general model, adversity was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with clusters within the left anterior lateral prefrontal cortex. In a dimensional model, abuse was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc within the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsal precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, and dorsal anterior cingulate cortex/anterior mid-cingulate cortex, as well as within the dorsal attention, visual, and somatomotor networks. Neglect was associated with altered amygdala rs-fc with the hippocampus, supplementary motor cortex, temporoparietal junction, and regions within the dorsal attention network. Both general and dimensional models revealed unique regions, potentially reflecting pathways by which distinct histories of adversity may influence adolescent behavior, cognition, and psychopathology

Delineating the Macroscale Areal Organization of the Macaque Cortex In Vivo

Summary: Complementing long-standing traditions centered on histology, fMRI approaches are rapidly maturing in delineating brain areal organization at the macroscale. The non-human primate (NHP) provides the opportunity to overcome critical barriers in translational research. Here, we establish the data requirements for achieving reproducible and internally valid parcellations in individuals. We demonstrate that functional boundaries serve as a functional fingerprint of the individual animals and can be achieved under anesthesia or awake conditions (rest, naturalistic viewing), though differences between awake and anesthetized states precluded the detection of individual differences across states. Comparison of awake and anesthetized states suggested a more nuanced picture of changes in connectivity for higher-order association areas, as well as visual and motor cortex. These results establish feasibility and data requirements for the generation of reproducible individual-specific parcellations in NHPs, provide insights into the impact of scan state, and motivate efforts toward harmonizing protocols. : Noninvasive fMRI in macaques is an essential tool in translation research. Xu et al. establish the individual functional parcellation of the macaque cortex and demonstrate that brain organization is unique, reproducible, and valid, serving as a fingerprint for an individual macaque. Keywords: macaque, parcellation, cortical areas, gradient, functional connectivit

Identifying reproducible individual differences in childhood functional brain networks: An ABCD study.

The 21-site Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study provides an unparalleled opportunity to characterize functional brain development via resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and to quantify relationships between RSFC and behavior. This multi-site data set includes potentially confounding sources of variance, such as differences between data collection sites and/or scanner manufacturers, in addition to those inherent to RSFC (e.g., head motion). The ABCD project provides a framework for characterizing and reproducing RSFC and RSFC-behavior associations, while quantifying the extent to which sources of variability bias RSFC estimates. We quantified RSFC and functional network architecture in 2,188 9-10-year old children from the ABCD study, segregated into demographically-matched discovery (N = 1,166) and replication datasets (N = 1,022). We found RSFC and network architecture to be highly reproducible across children. We did not observe strong effects of site; however, scanner manufacturer effects were large, reproducible, and followed a "short-to-long" association with distance between regions. Accounting for potential confounding variables, we replicated that RSFC between several higher-order networks was related to general cognition. In sum, we provide a framework for how to characterize RSFC-behavior relationships in a rigorous and reproducible manner using the ABCD dataset and other large multi-site projects

Image processing and analysis methods for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, nationwide study of the effects of environmental influences on behavioral and brain development in adolescents. The main objective of the study is to recruit and assess over eleven thousand 9-10-year-olds and follow them over the course of 10 years to characterize normative brain and cognitive development, the many factors that influence brain development, and the effects of those factors on mental health and other outcomes. The study employs state-of-the-art multimodal brain imaging, cognitive and clinical assessments, bioassays, and careful assessment of substance use, environment, psychopathological symptoms, and social functioning. The data is a resource of unprecedented scale and depth for studying typical and atypical development. The aim of this manuscript is to describe the baseline neuroimaging processing and subject-level analysis methods used by ABCD. Processing and analyses include modality-specific corrections for distortions and motion, brain segmentation and cortical surface reconstruction derived from structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI), analysis of brain microstructure using diffusion MRI (dMRI), task-related analysis of functional MRI (fMRI), and functional connectivity analysis of resting-state fMRI. This manuscript serves as a methodological reference for users of publicly shared neuroimaging data from the ABCD Study

Image processing and analysis methods for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study.

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, nationwide study of the effects of environmental influences on behavioral and brain development in adolescents. The main objective of the study is to recruit and assess over eleven thousand 9-10-year-olds and follow them over the course of 10 years to characterize normative brain and cognitive development, the many factors that influence brain development, and the effects of those factors on mental health and other outcomes. The study employs state-of-the-art multimodal brain imaging, cognitive and clinical assessments, bioassays, and careful assessment of substance use, environment, psychopathological symptoms, and social functioning. The data is a resource of unprecedented scale and depth for studying typical and atypical development. The aim of this manuscript is to describe the baseline neuroimaging processing and subject-level analysis methods used by ABCD. Processing and analyses include modality-specific corrections for distortions and motion, brain segmentation and cortical surface reconstruction derived from structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI), analysis of brain microstructure using diffusion MRI (dMRI), task-related analysis of functional MRI (fMRI), and functional connectivity analysis of resting-state fMRI. This manuscript serves as a methodological reference for users of publicly shared neuroimaging data from the ABCD Study