Biology subjects

Dick, F.

Publications and source records attributed to Dick, F..

7 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

An adolescent neuroimaging database combining movie-watching, eye-tracking and cognitive tasks

Adolescence is a critical period of neurodevelopment, yet most neuroimaging datasets focus on adult populations, leaving a gap in our understanding of how the brain processes information during this formative stage. Here we present a multimodal neuroimaging dataset acquired from 41 adolescent participants aged 11-18 years, combining 3T fMRI data with concurrent eye-tracking and physiological monitoring during naturalistic movie-watching. Data are shared in BIDS-compliant format and technical validation demonstrates good data quality across participants, with low head motion and strong inter-subject neural synchronisation during movie-watching. In addition to the scanning session, participants completed remote assessments covering a broad range of self-reported developmental and mental health traits, alongside cognitive tasks targeting reward-based and social learning. This dataset offers a rich resource for studying the adolescent brain, with particular utility for research on individual differences in mental health and cognition. All data and processing code is openly available to facilitate reproducible science.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Context dependent roles for RB-E2F transcriptional regulation in tumor suppression

RB-E2F transcriptional control plays a key role in regulating the timing of cell cycle progression from G1 to S-phase in response to growth factor stimulation. Despite this role, it is genetically dispensable for cell cycle exit in primary fibroblasts in response to growth arrest signals. Mice engineered to be defective for RB-E2F transcriptional control at cell cycle genes were also found to live a full lifespan with no susceptibility to cancer. Based on this background we sought to probe the vulnerabilities of RB-E2F transcriptional control defects found in Rb1R461E,K542E mutant mice (Rb1G) through genetic crosses with other mouse strains. We generated Rb1G/G mice in combination with Trp53 and Cdkn1a deficiencies, as well as in combination with KrasG12D. The Rb1G mutation enhanced Trp53 cancer susceptibility, but had no effect in combination with Cdkn1a deficiency or KrasG12D. Collectively, this study indicates that compromised RB-E2F transcriptional control is not uniformly cancer enabling, but rather has potent oncogenic effects when combined with specific vulnerabilities.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Redundancy makes music and speech robust to individual differences in perception

In speech, linguistic information is conveyed redundantly by many simultaneously present acoustic dimensions, such as fundamental frequency, duration and amplitude. Listeners show stable tendencies to prioritize these acoustic dimensions differently, relative to one another, which suggests individualized speech perception strategies. However, it is unclear what drives these strategies, and more importantly, what impact they have on diverse aspects of communication. Here we show that such individualized perceptual strategies can be related to individual differences in perceptual ability. In a cue weighting experiment, we first demonstrate that individuals with a severe pitch perception deficit (congenital amusics) categorize linguistic stimuli similarly to controls when their deficit is unrelated to the main distinguishing cue for that category (in this case, durational or temporal cues). In contrast, in a prosodic task where pitch-related cues are typically more informative, amusics place less importance on this pitch-related information when categorizing speech. Instead, they relied more on duration information. Crucially, these differences in perceptual weights were observed even when pitch-related differences were large enough to be perceptually distinct to amusic listeners. In a second set of experiments involving musical and prosodic phrase interpretation, we found that this reliance on duration information allowed amusics to overcome their perceptual deficits and perceive both speech and music successfully. These results suggest that successful speech - and potentially music - comprehension is achieved through multiple perceptual strategies whose underlying weights may in part reflect individuals perceptual abilities.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Laminar-specific cortical dynamics in human visual and sensorimotor cortices

Lower frequency, feedback, activity in the alpha and beta range is thought to predominantly originate from infragranular cortical layers, whereas feedforward signals in the gamma range stem largely from supragranular layers. Distinct anatomical and spectral channels may therefore play specialized roles in communication within hierarchical cortical networks; however, empirical evidence for this organization in humans is limited. We leverage high precision MEG to test this proposal, directly and non-invasively, in human participants during visually guided actions. Visual alpha activity mapped onto deep cortical laminae, whereas visual gamma activity predominantly arose from superficial laminae. This laminar-specificity was echoed in sensorimotor beta and gamma activity. Visual gamma activity scaled with task demands in a way compatible with feedforward signaling. For sensorimotor activity, we observed a more complex relationship with feedback and feedforward processes. Distinct frequency channels thus operate in a laminar-specific manner, but with dissociable functional roles across sensory and motor cortices.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Non-invasive laminar inference with MEG: Comparison of methods and source inversion algorithms

Magnetoencephalography (MEG) is a direct measure of neuronal current flow; its anatomical resolution is therefore not constrained by physiology but rather by data quality and the models used to explain these data. Recent simulation work has shown that it is possible to distinguish between signals arising in the deep and superficial cortical laminae given accurate knowledge of these surfaces with respect to the MEG sensors. This previous work has focused around a single inversion scheme (multiple sparse priors) and a single global parametric fit metric (free energy). In this paper we use several different source inversion algorithms and both local and global, as well as parametric and non-parametric fit metrics in order to demonstrate the robustness of the discrimination between layers. We find that only algorithms with some sparsity constraint can successfully be used to make laminar discrimination. Importantly, local t-statistics, global cross-validation and free energy all provide robust and mutually corroborating metrics of fit. We show that discrimination accuracy is affected by patch size estimates, cortical surface features, and lead field strength, which suggests several possible future improvements to this technique. This study demonstrates the possibility of determining the laminar origin of MEG sensor activity, and thus directly testing theories of human cognition that involve laminar- and frequency- specific mechanisms. This possibility can now be achieved using recent developments in high precision MEG, most notably the use of subject-specific head-casts, which allow for significant increases in data quality and therefore anatomically precise MEG recordings.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Extensive Tonotopic Mapping Across Auditory Cortex Is Recapitulated By Spectrally-Directed Attention, And Systematically Related To Cortical Myeloarchitecture

Auditory selective attention is vital in natural soundscapes. But, it is unclear how attentional focus on the primary dimension of auditory representation - acoustic frequency - might modulate basic auditory functional topography during active listening. In contrast to visual selective attention, which is supported by motor-mediated optimization of input across saccades and pupil dilation, the primate auditory system has fewer means of differentially sampling the world. This makes spectrally-directed endogenous attention a particularly crucial aspect of auditory attention. Using a novel functional paradigm combined with quantitative MRI, we establish that human frequency-band-selective attention drives activation in both myeloarchitectonically-estimated auditory core, and across the majority of tonotopically-mapped non-primary auditory cortex. The attentionally-driven best-frequency maps show strong concordance with sensory-driven maps in the same subjects across much of the temporal plane, with poor concordance in non-auditory areas. There is significantly greater activation across most of auditory cortex when best frequency is attended, versus ignored. Moreover, the single frequency bands that evoke the least activation and the frequency bands that elicit the least activation when attention is directed to them also correspond closely. Finally, the results demonstrate that there is spatial correspondence between the degree of myelination and the strength of the tonotopic signal across a number of regions in auditory cortex. Strong frequency preferences across tonotopically-mapped auditory cortex spatially correlate with R1-estimated myeloarchitecture, indicating shared functional and anatomical organization that may underlie intrinsic auditory regionalization.\n\nSignificancePerception is an active process especially sensitive to attentional state. Listeners direct auditory attention to track a violins melody within an ensemble performance, or to follow a voice in a crowded cafe. Although diverse pathologies reduce quality of life by impacting such spectrally-directed auditory attention, its neurobiological bases are unclear. We demonstrate that human primary and non-primary auditory cortical activation is modulated by spectrally-directed attention in a manner that recapitulates its tonotopic sensory organization. Further, the graded activation profiles evoked by single frequency bands are correlated with attentionally-driven activation when these bands are presented in complex soundscapes. Finally, we observe a strong concordance in the degree of cortical myelination and the strength of tonotopic activation across several auditory cortical regions.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2017

Quantitative MRI Provides Markers Of Intra-, Inter-Regional, And Age-Related Differences In Young Adult Cortical Microstructure

Measuring the structural composition of the cortex is critical to understanding typical development, yet few investigations in humans have charted markers in vivo that are sensitive to tissue microstructural attributes. Here, we used a well-validated quantitative MR protocol to measure four parameters (R1, MT, R2*, PD*) that differ in their sensitivity to facets of the tissue microstructural environment (R1, MT: myelin, macromolecular content; R2*: paramagnetic ions, i.e., iron; PD*: free water content). Mapping these parameters across cortical regions in a young adult cohort (18-30 years, N=93) revealed expected patterns of increased macromolecular content as well as reduced tissue water content in primary and primary adjacent cortical regions. Mapping across cortical depth within regions showed decreased expression of myelin and related processes - but increased tissue water content - when progressing from the grey/white to the grey/pial boundary, in all regions. Charting developmental change in cortical microstructure, we found that parameters with the greatest sensitivity to tissue myelin (R1 & MT) showed linear increases with age across frontal and parietal cortex (change 0.5-1.0% per year). Overlap of robust age effects for both parameters emerged in left inferior frontal, right parietal and bilateral pre-central regions. Our findings afford an improved understanding of ontogeny in early adulthood and offer normative quantitative MR data for inter- and intra-cortical composition, which may be used as benchmarks in further studies.\n\nHighlights O_LIWe mapped multi-parameter maps (MPMs) across and within cortical regions\nC_LIO_LIWe charted age effects on myelin and related processes at mid-cortical depth\nC_LIO_LIInter- and intra-regional differences in MPMs emerged at primary and association cortex\nC_LIO_LIIron-sensitive R2* map foci tended to overlap MPMs sensitive to myelin (R1, MT)\nC_LIO_LIR1 and MT increased with age (0.5-1.0% per year) in frontal and parietal cortex\nC_LI

neuroscience↗