Aliza Brzezinski-Rittner

We are excited to launch The Data Quartet Challenge, recognizing student contributions to projects that integrate data from at least 2 of 4 FRQ supported Quebec Alzheimer’s and Aging cohorts (PREVENT-AD, CIMA-Q, NuAge, TRIAD), with 3 prizes of 5000$ tinyurl.com/3dy899xn

Hey #AAIC25 !
Today I'll be sharing our research on the mediating effect of WMH on spontaneous brain activity during aging! 🧠
Join me on poster 430!
@ameliemetz.bsky.social @dadarmahsa.bsky.social @yasharneuro.bsky.social @roqamoqa.bsky.social

Congrats to HBHL-funded researcher & 2022 HBHL New Faculty Recruit @dadarmahsa.bsky.social on being awarded the President’s Prize for Outstanding Emerging Researchers at the 2025 @mcgill.ca @healthsciences.mcgill.ca Convocation Ceremony! Well deserved. 👏

🔗 reporter.mcgill.ca/mcgills-pres...

Sneak peek from first poster session at #HBHLSymposium2025 📸

With over 100 trainees presenting their innovative research on brain health, it's a great opportunity to explore new perspectives and pioneering work from the next generation of researchers! 🖼️🎓 @healthsciences.mcgill.ca

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women The Women’s Health Initiative has produced numerous influential findings

NIH cancels its first and largest study centered on women | Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Exclusive: NIH appears to archive policy requiring female animals in studies Such a shift would “put us back in the dark ages in terms of our science,” says neuroscientist Anne Murphy, who helped to formulate the original policy.

Great write up at @thetransmitter.bsky.social on the seeming erasure of SABV in the new era of NIH. Gotta say The Transmitter is killing it the last few weeks, first to report on the Federal Register block and now this. Leading the charge! 💪 www.thetransmitter.org/policy/exclu...

Excited to share that the first project of my PhD was published in 🧠 @braincomms.bsky.social 🧠 !!
We showed that machine learning can effectively differentiate frontotemporal dementia subtypes combining brain atrophy and cognition 🎉
doi.org/10.1093/brai... (1/10)

We are organizing a Neuroimaging Summer School with the @cervo-ulaval.bsky.social in Quebec and @ibroorg.bsky.social. LATAM graduate students will have all expenses paid. More info at the site and here q2summerschool@inb.unam.mx
Calls will close April 20.

q2summerschool.com
ibro.org/training-opp...

Hello, world. We’ve made our way to the bright side. 🦋 Let’s be friends?

Don’t forget to check the full paper for more details! 📃 Thanks to my advisors @dadarmahsa.bsky.social and @yasharneuro.bsky.social, and to everyone who contributed to this work ( @mallarchak.bsky.social + bsky-less Yasser and Roya ) for making it possible! 10/10

🧠 allometry is not heavily impacted by TIV and the sex differences are subtle
🧠 TIV might impact the performance in “verbal and numerical reasoning”, “working memory”, and “non-verbal reasoning” domains 9/10

In summary:
🧠 estimated sex differences in aging models decrease when females and males have the same TIV and more subtle patterns of sex difference emerge once the impact of TIV is removed 8/10

Finally, we explored cognitive functioning with the data included in the UKBB dataset. We found that TIV played a role mainly in the cognitive domains of “verbal and numerical reasoning” and “working memory”. 7/10

We asked if brain allometry was affected by sex and/or age. We found that it was consistent across our sample’s age range and between sexes, and followed a similar pattern across brain sizes. 6/10

Projected onto functional connectivity networks, the three measures follow the same pattern; for the cytoarchitectonic classes, volume and CT are similar while SA seems to be balanced for most of the classes. 5/10

We ran the same analyses at the vertex level and found that volume and surface area (SA) are impacted by head size in the same direction as regional volumes, however cortical thickness (CT) is less impacted and in the opposite direction. 4/10

We first asked if females and males had different aging trajectories. In the not matched🔴 sample, all the estimations for males were large, while TIV matching🟡 showed us subtle and bidirectional sex differences. 3/10

We used the UK Biobank data to create subsamples (N = 11,294, 50%F) that removed (total intracranial volume [TIV] and age matched 🟡), maintained (not matched 🔴), or exaggerated (extreme) the TIV differences between sexes. 2/10

It’s out! 🎉 Check our paper “Disentangling the effect of sex from brain size on brain organization and cognitive functioning” 🧠, where we explored sex differences in the brain while removing the effect of brain size differences. 1/10

link.springer.com/article/10.1...