Duncan Astle

This defines success of the SEND reforms not in specific accommodations, “but by whether neurodivergent children fundamentally feel that they belong and are wanted in school, and that they are supported to achieve, attain and prepare for adulthood.

Alongside the government's #SENDwhitepaper the The Neurodivergence Task and Finish Group have published their recommendations for mainstream education.

assets.publishing.se...

A bit old now, but great Registered Report by Maya Raza (not on here)

Quite apart from the policy issues here, why did UKRI choose to release this important letter on a Sunday teatime???

New preprint 🎉 Psych constructs are complex. Symptoms overlap, people rarely fit neat categories, and patterns are non-linear. Most methods compromise this richness. Self-Organising Maps don't. We provide a step-by-step tutorial with annotated R code to make them accessible.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🚨new work with the dream team @danakarca.bsky.social @loopyluppi.bsky.social @fatemehhadaeghi.bsky.social @stuartoldham.bsky.social @duncanastle.bsky.social
We use game theory and show the brain is not optimally wired for communication and there’s more to its story:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

New study shows how your brain changes at four key ages: 9, 32, 66 and 83 New research finds that brain development is not linear. There are distinct phases with unique characteristics.

A new study shows brain development isn’t as linear as expected.

After analyzing nearly 4,000 scans from ages 0–90, researchers found major structural shifts at ages 9, 32, 66, and 83 — dividing life into five distinct phases.

Had a great time talking to Maggie Penman about new research on lifespan brain development led by @alexamousley.bsky.social in @duncanastle.bsky.social's group.

This is a great summary of the study and a broader discussion of what brain research can teach us about important developmental phases.

Utterly delighted to have been awarded 5 years of research funding from the ERC to study low-activity brain states that could underpin flexible rule use. Let’s see what "pinging" can tell us about how task sets are assembled and changed!

Impact of demographic change in one image.

Your brain undergoes four dramatic periods of change from age 0 to 90 Our brain wiring seems to undergo four major turning points at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83, which could influence our capacity to learn and our risk of certain conditions

Our brain wiring seems to undergo four major turning points at ages 9, 32, 66 and 83, which could influence our capacity to learn and our risk of certain conditions

Topological turning points across the human lifespan - Nature Communications Researchers discovered five phases of brain rewiring across the lifespan. The eras of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, early aging, and late aging each have characteristic rewiring of structural con...

Open access link to new study in Nature Communications:

Topological turning points across the human lifespan.

🧪🧠 #neuroskyence
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Four pivotal ages in your brain's development revealed in new scientific study Brain scans on thousands of people reveal the dramatic shifts the brain goes through between birth and death.

The human brain goes through distinct phases in life, with turning points at ages 9, 32, 66 & 83, scientists have revealed.

~4,000 people up to the age of 90 had scans to reveal the connections between their brain cells.

We "peak" in our early 30s ...

🧪🧠 #neuroskyence
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Topological turning points across the human lifespan - Nature Communications Researchers discovered five phases of brain rewiring across the lifespan. The eras of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, early aging, and late aging each have characteristic rewiring of structural connections across the whole brain.

One of our top-rated posts on @altmetric.com this past week was published open access in @natcomms.nature.com. You can read 'Topological turning points across the human lifespan' here: spklr.io/63329BX7zL

#Neuroskyence #neuroimaging 🧠

Human brains have 5 distinct 'epochs' in a lifetime, study finds During each of these phases, our brains show markedly different characteristics in brain architecture, according to the new findings.

Another reason why you really can't beat yourself up over mistakes in the past -

Human #brains have 5 distinct 'epochs' in a lifetime, study finds www.nbcnews.com/science/scie...

#braindevelopment #research #neuroimaging #neuralnetwork #mentalhealth #brainarchitecture

Four pivotal ages in your brain's development revealed in new scientific study Brain scans on thousands of people reveal the dramatic shifts the brain goes through between birth and death.

New @mrccbu.bsky.social @campsydept.bsky.social study by Alexa Mousley, Richard Bethlehem, Fang-Cheng Yeh & @duncanastle.bsky.social shows four pivotal ages during brain development

bbc.com/news/article...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Now it's the @mrccbu.bsky.social's @duncanastle.bsky.social's turn to excite our #COGNESTIC audience. No problem when you are "Building networks to understand neurodevelopment".

Brain wiring economics, network organisation and population-level genomics Abstract. What role do our genes play in shaping the structural organisation of the living human brain? Across a sample of 2,153 children (9–11 years old), we address this question, focusing on common...

*New Paper* How genes for IQ shape brain organisation. Amazing work led by Alicja Monaghan @mrccbu.bsky.social reveals 2 ways. First, they’re associated w/ the ‘costs’ of network formation. Second, they define ‘high value’ areas within the network. How she did it…🧵
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Want the details? Check out the open access paper. Thanks to funders MRC, @templetonworld.bsky.social,
and supporters @camneuro.bsky.social, @mrccbu.bsky.social, and @4dlab.bsky.social

These genes in particular seems to be responsible for cellular and biological processes involved in synapse development and transmitter and anion-gated channel activity.

Second, she used transcription data from the
@alleninstitute.org, and found that the genes in the PGS particularly overlap with the regional distribution of the ‘values’ part of the GNM – that is they define the areas the model wants to connect.

Those with *high* polygenic scores (PGS) for cognitive ability had a *softer* ‘distance penalty’ in their GNM. The end result is that networks form slightly more ‘shortest paths’. The end result? Slightly more stochastic, variable and efficient brain networks.

First, she built connectomes from ~2k 10yr olds from ABCD. To each she fit a generative network model (GNM) – a simple computational model for simulating their topology.

Brain wiring economics, network organisation and population-level genomics Abstract. What role do our genes play in shaping the structural organisation of the living human brain? Across a sample of 2,153 children (9–11 years old), we address this question, focusing on common...

*New Paper* How genes for IQ shape brain organisation. Amazing work led by Alicja Monaghan @mrccbu.bsky.social reveals 2 ways. First, they’re associated w/ the ‘costs’ of network formation. Second, they define ‘high value’ areas within the network. How she did it…🧵
doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Alert! ... for the child development world!

@fluxsociety.bsky.social @fitngin.bsky.social ‪

The Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study has released its first data wave - it’s massive.

Check here:
docs.hbcdstudy.org

and here:
nbdc-datahub.org

Here’s why it matters 🧠🍼

Absolute honour to chair this panel of superstars @royalsociety.org yesterday, including @duncanastle.bsky.social & @tamsinford.bsky.social

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Alicja Monaghan, Danyal Akarca, and Duncan E. Astle:

Brain wiring economics, network organisation and population-level genomics

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Adolescent maturation of cortical excitation-inhibition ratio based on individualized biophysical network modeling Individualized simulations reveal a decrease in excitation-inhibition ratio in association areas throughout adolescence.

🧠⚖️📉 How does the cortical excitation-inhibition ratio mature during adolescence?
We asked this in our new paper just out in #ScienceAdvances ✨
“Adolescent maturation of cortical excitation-inhibition ratio based on individualized biophysical network modeling”
📄 www.science.org/doi/full/10....
🧵⤵️