Biology subjects

Ooi, L. Q. R.

Publications and source records attributed to Ooi, L. Q. R..

7 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

Multimodal neural correlates of childhood psychopathology

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWComplex structural and functional changes occurring in typical and atypical development necessitate multidimensional approaches to better understand the risk of developing psychopathology. Here, we simultaneously examined structural and functional brain network patterns in relation to dimensions of psychopathology in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development dataset. Several components were identified, recapitulating the psychopathology hierarchy, with the general psychopathology (p) factor explaining most covariance with multimodal imaging features, while the internalizing, externalizing, and neurodevelopmental dimensions were each associated with distinct morphological and functional connectivity signatures. Connectivity signatures associated with the p factor and neurodevelopmental dimensions followed the sensory-to-transmodal axis of cortical organization, which is related to the emergence of complex cognition and risk for psychopathology. Results were consistent in two separate data subsamples, supporting generalizability, and robust to variations in analytical parameters. Our findings help in better understanding biological mechanisms underpinning dimensions of psychopathology, and could provide brain-based vulnerability markers.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Brain-based predictions of psychiatric illness-linked behaviors across the sexes

BackgroundIndividual differences in functional brain connectivity can be used to predict both the presence of psychiatric illness and variability in associated behaviors. However, despite evidence for sex differences in functional network connectivity and in the prevalence, presentation, and trajectory of psychiatric illnesses, the extent to which disorder-relevant aspects of network connectivity are shared or unique across the sexes remains to be determined. MethodsIn this work, we used predictive modelling approaches to evaluate whether shared or unique functional connectivity correlates underlie the expression of psychiatric illness-linked behaviors in males and females in data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study (n=5260; 2571 females). ResultsWe demonstrate that functional connectivity profiles predict individual differences in externalizing behaviors in males and females, but only predict internalizing behaviors in females. Furthermore, models trained to predict externalizing behaviors in males generalize to predict internalizing behaviors in females, and models trained to predict internalizing behaviors in females generalize to predict externalizing behaviors in males. Finally, the neurobiological correlates of many behaviors are largely shared within and across sexes: functional connections within and between heteromodal association networks including default, limbic, control, and dorsal attention networks are associated with internalizing and externalizing behaviors as well as attentional deficits. ConclusionsTaken together, these findings suggest that shared neurobiological patterns may manifest as distinct behaviors across the sexes. These results highlight the need to consider factors beyond just neurobiology in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illnesses.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Comparison Between Gradients and Parcellations for Functional Connectivity Prediction of Behavior

Resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) is widely used to predict behavioral measures. To predict behavioral measures, representing RSFC with parcellations and gradients are the two most popular approaches. Here, we compare parcellation and gradient approaches for RSFC-based prediction of a broad range of behavioral measures in the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) datasets. Among the parcellation approaches, we consider group-average "hard" parcellations (Schaefer et al., 2018), individual-specific "hard" parcellations (Kong et al., 2021a), and an individual-specific "soft" parcellation (spatial independent component analysis with dual regression; Beckmann et al., 2009). For gradient approaches, we consider the well-known principal gradients (Margulies et al., 2016) and the local gradient approach that detects local RSFC changes (Laumann et al., 2015). Across two regression algorithms, individual-specific hard-parcellation performs the best in the HCP dataset, while the principal gradients, spatial independent component analysis and group-average "hard" parcellations exhibit similar performance. On the other hand, principal gradients and all parcellation approaches perform similarly in the ABCD dataset. Across both datasets, local gradients perform the worst. Finally, we find that the principal gradient approach requires at least 40 to 60 gradients to perform as well as parcellation approaches. While most principal gradient studies utilize a single gradient, our results suggest that incorporating higher order gradients can provide significant behaviorally relevant information. Future work will consider the inclusion of additional parcellation and gradient approaches for comparison.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

There is no fundamental trade-off between prediction accuracy and feature importance reliability

There is significant interest in using neuroimaging data to predict behavior. The predictive models are often interpreted by the computation of feature importance, which quantifies the predictive relevance of an imaging feature. Tian and Zalesky (2021) suggest that feature importance estimates exhibit low split-half reliability, as well as a trade-off between prediction accuracy and feature importance reliability across parcellation resolutions. However, it is unclear whether the trade-off between prediction accuracy and feature importance reliability is universal. Here, we demonstrate that, with a sufficient sample size, feature importance (operationalized as Haufe-transformed weights) can achieve fair to excellent split-half reliability. With a sample size of 2600 participants, Haufe-transformed weights achieve average intra-class correlation coefficients of 0.75, 0.57 and 0.53 for cognitive, personality and mental health measures respectively. Haufe-transformed weights are much more reliable than original regression weights and univariate FC-behavior correlations. Original regression weights are not reliable even with 2600 participants. Intriguingly, feature importance reliability is strongly positively correlated with prediction accuracy across phenotypes. Within a particular behavioral domain, there is no clear relationship between prediction performance and feature importance reliability across regression models. Furthermore, we show mathematically that feature importance reliability is necessary, but not sufficient, for low feature importance error. In the case of linear models, lower feature importance error is mathematically related to lower prediction error. Therefore, higher feature importance reliability might yield lower feature importance error and higher prediction accuracy. Finally, we discuss how our theoretical results relate with the reliability of imaging features and behavioral measures. Overall, the current study provides empirical and theoretical insights into the relationship between prediction accuracy and feature importance reliability.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Proportional intracranial volume correction differentially biases behavioral predictions across neuroanatomical features and populations

Individual differences in brain anatomy can be used to predict variability in cognitive function. Most studies to date have focused on broad population-level trends, but the extent to which the observed predictive features are shared across sexes and age groups remains to be established. While it is standard practice to account for intracranial volume (ICV) using proportion correction in both regional and whole-brain morphometric analyses, in the context of brain-behavior predictions the possible differential impact of ICV correction on anatomical features and subgroups within the population has yet to be systematically investigated. In this work, we evaluate the effect of proportional ICV correction on sex-independent and sex-specific predictive models of individual cognitive abilities across multiple anatomical properties (surface area, gray matter volume, and cortical thickness) in healthy young adults (Human Connectome Project; n=1013, 548 females) and typically developing children (Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study; n=1823, 979 females). We demonstrate that ICV correction generally reduces predictive accuracies derived from surface area and gray matter volume, while increasing predictive accuracies based on cortical thickness in both adults and children. Furthermore, the extent to which predictive models generalize across sexes and age groups depends on ICV correction: models based on surface area and gray matter volume are more generalizable without ICV correction, while models based on cortical thickness are more generalizable with ICV correction. Finally, the observed neuroanatomical features predictive of cognitive abilities are unique across age groups regardless of ICV correction, but whether they are shared or unique across sexes (within age groups) depends on ICV correction. These findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in ICV, and show that proportional ICV correction does not remove the effects of cranium volumes from anatomical measurements and can introduce ICV bias where previously there was none. ICV correction choices affect not just the strength of the relationships captured, but also the conclusions drawn regarding the neuroanatomical features that underlie those relationships.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Comparison of individualized behavioral predictions across anatomical, diffusion and functional connectivity MRI

A fundamental goal across the neurosciences is the characterization of relationships linking brain anatomy, functioning, and behavior. Although various MRI modalities have been developed to probe these relationships, direct comparisons of their ability to predict behavior have been lacking. Here, we compared the ability of anatomical T1, diffusion and functional MRI (fMRI) to predict behavior at an individual level. Cortical thickness, area and volume were extracted from anatomical T1 images. Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) and approximate Neurite Orientation Dispersion and Density Imaging (NODDI) models were fitted to the diffusion images. The resulting metrics were projected to the Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) skeleton. We also ran probabilistic tractography for the diffusion images, from which we extracted the stream count, average stream length, and the average of each DTI and NODDI metric across tracts connecting each pair of brain regions. Functional connectivity (FC) was extracted from both task and resting-state fMRI. Individualized prediction of a wide range of behavioral measures were performed using kernel ridge regression, linear ridge regression and elastic net regression. Consistency of the results were investigated with the Human Connectome Project (HCP) and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) datasets. In both datasets, FC-based models gave the best prediction performance, regardless of regression model or behavioral measure. This was especially true for the cognitive domain. Furthermore, all modalities were able to predict cognition better than other behavioral domains. Combining all modalities improved prediction of cognition, but not other behavioral domains. Finally, across all behaviors, combining resting and task FC yielded prediction performance similar to combining all modalities. Overall, our study suggests that in the case of healthy children and young adults, behaviorally-relevant information in T1 and diffusion features might reflect a subset of the variance captured by FC. HighlightsO_LIFC predicts behavior better than anatomical and diffusion features C_LIO_LICognition is predicted better than other behavioral domains regardless of modality C_LIO_LICombining resting & task FC improves prediction as much as combining all modalities C_LIO_LIFindings were replicated over 3 regression models and 2 datasets C_LI

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Shared and unique brain network features predict cognition, personality and mental health in childhood

The manner through which individual differences in brain network organization track population-level behavioral variability is a fundamental question in systems neuroscience. Recent work suggests that resting-state and task-state functional connectivity can predict specific traits at the individual level. However, the focus of most studies on single behavioral traits has come at the expense of capturing broader relationships across behaviors. Here, we utilized a large-scale dataset of 1858 typically developing children to estimate whole-brain functional network organization that is predictive of individual differences in cognition, impulsivity-related personality, and mental health during rest and task states. Predictive network features were distinct across the broad behavioral domains: cognition, personality and mental health. On the other hand, traits within each behavioral domain were predicted by highly similar network features. This is surprising given decades of research emphasizing that distinct brain networks support different mental processes. Although tasks are known to modulate the functional connectome, we found that predictive network features were similar between resting and task states. Overall, our findings reveal shared brain network features that account for individual variation within broad domains of behavior in childhood, yet are unique to different behavioral domains.

neuroscience↗