Biology subjects

Charquero-Ballester, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Charquero-Ballester, M..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

The link between gender inequality and the distribution of brain regions' relative sizes across the lifespan and the world

Evidence is emerging that the socioeconomic environment in general, and gender inequality in particular, can be a shaping force on brain structure. However, our understanding of the nature of this influence throughout the lifespan is often limited because most current data sets are geographically and demographically narrow, making it unclear whether results hold across distinct world populations. Here we analyse, for the first time, data from an online MRI analysis platform comprising 13277 subjects from 52 countries and the five continents, across ages that range from childhood to late life. We examined how gender inequality, jointly examined with economic inequality, relates to differences in brain grey matter between males and females. We found that the association between female-male brain differences and gender inequality increases with age, suggesting a cumulative effect of gender inequality throughout life. Further, by considering additional variables that are specifically related to the economy, we found that this effect was, as per current data, dominated by the economic aspects of inequality.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Effective psychological treatment for PTSD changes the dynamics of specific large-scale brain networks

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWVery little is known about the role of effective cognitive therapy in reversing imbalances in brain activity after trauma. We hypothesised that exaggerated threat perception characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and subsequent recovery from this disorder, are underpinned by changes in the dynamics of large-scale brain networks. Here, we use a novel data-driven approach with high temporal precision to find recurring brain networks from fMRI data and estimate when these networks become active during exposure to either trauma reminders or neutral pictures. We found that PTSD patients spend less time in two default mode sub-networks in contrast to trauma-exposed healthy controls, and that PTSD symptom severity correlates positively with time spent in the salience network during exposure to trauma reminders. The former are important for different aspects of self-referential processing and the latter for detection of threat. Importantly, the decreased time in the default mode sub-networks is rebalanced after successful cognitive therapy for PTSD. Our results show that remittance of PTSD through trauma-focused cognitive therapy is associated with the successful reinstatement of a healthy balance in self-referential and threat detection brain networks.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

XTRACT - Standardised protocols for automated tractography and connectivity blueprints in the human and macaque brain

We present a new software package with a library of standardised tractography protocols devised for the robust automated extraction of white matter tracts both in the human and the macaque brain. Using in vivo data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and the UK Biobank and ex vivo data for the macaque brain datasets, we obtain white matter atlases, as well as atlases for tract endpoints on the white-grey matter boundary, for both species. We illustrate that our protocols are robust against data quality, generalisable across two species and reflect the known anatomy. We further demonstrate that they capture inter-subject variability by preserving tract lateralisation in humans and tract similarities stemming from twinship in the HCP cohort. Our results demonstrate that the presented toolbox will be useful for generating imaging-derived features in large cohorts, and in facilitating comparative neuroanatomy studies. The software, tractography protocols, and atlases are publicly released through FSL, allowing users to define their own tractography protocols in a standardised manner, further contributing to open science.

neuroscience↗