Lucinda Sisk

🚨Thrilled to share I am able to hire someone (PhD preferred) with coding expertise to work on our HAPPE software for EEG! Knowledge of Matlab, Python, and EEG signal processing required. Enthusiasm for teaching/mentoring, collaboration, and developmental science preferred!

This work would also not have been possible without use of the @childmindinstitute.bsky.social Healthy Brain Network Study, as well as the Reproducible Brain Charts Project (reprobrainchart.github.io). Thank you to the teams involved in data collection, release, and preprocessing!

Huge thanks to the scientific team that made this study possible—the amazing @dylanggee.bsky.social, Taylor Keding, Allison Drew, and Emilie Ma, as well as wonderful collaborators @goliashf.bsky.social, @cieslakmatt.bsky.social, and @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social. 🎊

Together, these findings suggest key roles for neural circuits related to stress regulation and memory in adapting to support optimal functioning after adversity exposure, and highlight the concordance of neural structure and function as an important indicator of individual risk and resilience! 🧠🌱

A figure showing hippocampal-limbic circuit connectivity, a faceted scatter plot, and a Johnson-Neyman plot.

Exploratory analyses found that hippocampal-limbic network SFC also moderated the link between adversity and internalizing symptoms, but in the OPPOSITE direction of amygdala-vmPFC SFC—that is, the association between adversity and symptoms was weaker for youth with LOWER hippocampal-limbic SFC.

We found that the pattern of increased SFC was specific to the amygdala-vmPFC circuit, and also observed a significant effect of adversity in the hippocampal-limbic network circuit—specifically, adversity exposure was negatively associated with hippocampal-limbic SFC across development.

A figure showing SFC-age associations across different circuits.

Next, we wanted to see if this pattern was specific to the amygdala-vmPFC circuit. To do this, we examined whether adversity moderated developmental change in SFC between the hippocampus/amygdala and the seven major functional networks.

A figure shoeing circuit connectivity, a faceted scatterplot, and a Johnson-Neyman plot.

Further, we found that stronger amgydala-vmPFC SFC buffered the association between adversity exposure and internalizing symptoms, such that the association between adversity exposure and internalizing symptoms was weaker for youth with stronger amygdala-vmPFC SFC.

A figure showing faceted scatterplots

We found that amygdala-vmPFC SFC differed among youth with exposure to high levels of adversity, such that amygdala-vmPFC SFC increased with age, in contrast to youth with lower levels of adversity exposure who did not show age-related change in this circuit.

A methods diagram showing how measures were computed and analyzed.

Using the @childmindinstitute.bsky.social Healthy Brain Network sample, we examined how subcortical-cortical SFC was associated with adversity exposure across development, and whether SFC would moderate associations between adversity and clinical symptoms. 💭

Understanding how adversity exposure alters neurodevelopment is important for elucidating the neural underpinnings of risk for psychopathology. Structure-function coupling (SFC) indexes the correspondence between structural and functional connectomes, and is sensitive to developmental plasticity 🧠📈

Excited to share a new preprint that examines how adversity exposure across development is associated with subcortical-cortical structure-function coupling and youth mental health! 🧠
Thread below: 🧵⬇

Anatomical White Matter Tracts Span the Cortical Hierarchy to Support Cognitive Diversity Long-range white matter (WM) tracts support cognition by enabling communication between distant cortical regions, which are organized along a hierarchy defined by the sensorimotor-to-association (S-A)...

Ever wondered how white matter tracts actually map onto the cortical hierarchy and cognition—beyond the usual “projection vs association” labels?
Our new preprint tackles exactly that! 🧠✨ doi.org/10.64898/202...
Thread below 🧵

... Jason Haberman, SadieZacharek, H. Hodges, Camila Caballero, Gillian Gold, Audrey Huang, Ashley Talton, and of course superstar mentor and scientist Dylan Gee! (8/8)

This was a huge team effort that would not have been possible without contributions from many folks over the years. Beyond grateful to all collaborators on this project:
Taylor Keding, Emily Cohodes, Sarah McCauley, Jasmyne Pierre, Paola Odriozola, Sahana Kribakaran... (7/8)

Our findings also highlight middle childhood as a period during which adversity may confer heightened risk for future mental health problems. Research into developmentally-informed interventions for youth during middle childhood may aid in offsetting adversity-related risk (6/8)

Together, these findings suggest that adversity exposure in middle childhood may potentiate systematic experience-dependent changes in white matter integrity throughout the brain, that differ by circuit function and intersect with ongoing circuit maturation (5/8)

Further, latent patterns of white matter tract integrity (indexed using quantitative anisotropy) linked with middle childhood adversity exposure were associated with trauma-related symptoms (4/8)

That is, our results suggest that middle childhood adversity exposure may be simultaneously linked with higher integrity in sensorimotor tracts (such as the corticospinal tract), and lower integrity in cortico-cortical tracts (such as the superior longitudinal fasciculus) (3/8)

Using a multivariate approach, we identified a systematic pattern whereby adversity exposure during middle childhood was differentially linked with white matter tract integrity according to whether the tract supported sensorimotor or cortico-cortical communication (2/8)

Multivariate links between the developmental timing of adversity exposure and white matter tract int... bioRxiv - the preprint server for biology, operated by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a research and educational institution

‼️ Excited to share a new preprint! Using a novel measure of adversity exposure (the DISTAL), we characterized links between the developmental timing of adversity, integrity of brain-wide white matter tracts, and mental health symptoms bit.ly/46e083V (1/8)

Please encourage any psych, cog, and/or neuroscience undergrads wanting an intensive, immersive, supportive, and *paid* summer research experience to apply! WashU’s ENDURE program is world class, and my lab would be delighted to support a mentored research project 🙂

endure.wustl.edu/apply/

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💫 That's a wrap! 💫

Statement feedback has been returned to applicants!

Check spam/junk folders and email applicant-support@asfp.io if you didn't get an email but believe you should have.