Associations Between Neighborhood SES and Functional Brain Network Development

Higher socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood is associated with stronger cognitive abilities, higher academic achievement, and lower incidence of mental illness later in development. While prior work has mapped the associations between neighborhood SES and brain structure, little is known about the relationship between SES and intrinsic neural dynamics. Here, we capitalize upon a large cross-sectional community-based sample (Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort, ages 8–22 years, n = 1012) to examine associations between age, SES, and functional brain network topology. We characterize this topology using a local measure of network segregation known as the clustering coefficient and find that it accounts for a greater degree of SES-associated variance than mesoscale segregation captured by modularity. High-SES youth displayed stronger positive associations between age and clustering than low-SES youth, and this effect was most pronounced for regions in the limbic, somatomotor, and ventral attention systems. The moderating effect of SES on positive associations between age and clustering was strongest for connections of intermediate length and was consistent with a stronger negative relationship between age and local connectivity in these regions in low-SES youth. Our findings suggest that, in late childhood and adolescence, neighborhood SES is associated with variation in the development of functional network structure in the human brain

Early stressful experiences are associated with reduced neural responses to naturalistic emotional and social content in children

How do children’s experiences relate to their naturalistic emotional and social processing? Because children can struggle with tasks in the scanner, we collected fMRI data while 4-to-11-year-olds watched a short film with positive and negative emotional events, and rich parent-child interactions (n = 70). We captured broad, normative stressful experiences by examining socioeconomic status (SES) and stressful life events, as well as children’s more proximal experiences with their parents. For a sub-sample (n = 30), parenting behaviors were measured during a parent-child interaction, consisting of a picture book, a challenging puzzle, and free play with novel toys. We characterized positive parenting behaviors (e.g., warmth, praise) and negative parenting behaviors (e.g., harsh tone, physical control). We found that higher SES was related to greater activity in medial orbitofrontal cortex during parent-child interaction movie events. Negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the ventral tegmental area and cerebellum during positive emotional events. In a region-of-interest analysis, we found that stressful life events and negative parenting behaviors were associated with less activation of the amygdala during positive emotional events. These exploratory results demonstrate the promise of using movie fMRI to study how early experiences may shape emotional, social, and motivational processes

The reference site collaborative network of the european innovation partnership on active and healthy ageing

Seventy four Reference Sites of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing (EIP on AHA) have been recognised by the European Commission in 2016 for their commitment to excellence in investing and scaling up innovative solutions for active and healthy ageing. The Reference Site Collaborative Network (RSCN) brings together the EIP on AHA Reference Sites awarded by the European Commission, and Candidate Reference Sites into a single forum. The overarching goals are to promote cooperation, share and transfer good practice and solutions in the development and scaling up of health and care strategies, policies and service delivery models, while at the same time supporting the action groups in their work. The RSCN aspires to be recognized by the EU Commission as the principal forum and authority representing all EIP on AHA Reference Sites. The RSCN will contribute to achieve the goals of the EIP on AHA by improving health and care outcomes for citizens across Europe, and the development of sustainable economic growth and the creation of jobs

Functional Brain Network Development: Shifting Boundaries & Environmental Influences

In this work, we take a network science approach to studying large-scale intrinsic brain networks during three important periods of development. In the first study, we employ sophisticated acquisition and analysis tools to investigate functional network development in children between the ages of 4 and 10 (n = 92). We demonstrate that age is positively associated with network segregation at multiple spatial scales, and that associations between age and functional connectivity are most pronounced in visual and medial prefrontal cortex, at two ends of a gradient from perceptual, externally-oriented cortex to abstract, internally-oriented cortex. In the second study, we uncover the community structure of cortex in children aged 9 to 11 years (n = 670). We show that children have similar community structure to adults in early-developing sensory and motor communities, but differences emerge in association areas. Children have more cortical territory in the limbic community, which is involved in emotion processing, than adults. Regions in association cortex interact more flexibly across communities, perhaps reflecting cortical boundaries that are not yet solidified, and uncertainty is highest for cingulo-opercular areas involved in flexible deployment of cognitive control. In the third study, we map the associations between neighborhood SES and functional brain networks in a sample of children between the ages of 8 and 22 years (n = 1012). We characterize network topology using a local measure of network segregation known as the clustering coefficient and find that it accounts for a greater degree of SES-associated variance than mesoscale segregation captured by modularity. High- SES youth show stronger positive associations between age and segregation than low-SES youth, and this effect was most pronounced for regions in the limbic, somatomotor, and ventral attention systems. Collectively, our results provide new insights into how changes in cortical organization give rise to changes in the mind as children grow up, and how variation in the neighborhood environment might in turn affect brain development

QSIPrep: an integrative platform for preprocessing and reconstructing diffusion MRI data

Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) is the primary method for noninvasively studying the organization of white matter in the human brain. Here we introduce QSIPrep, an integrative software platform for the processing of diffusion images that is compatible with nearly all dMRI sampling schemes. Drawing on a diverse set of software suites to capitalize on their complementary strengths, QSIPrep facilitates the implementation of best practices for processing of diffusion images