Marvin Petersen

Diffusion MRI Processing in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study: Innovations and Applications The landmark ongoing HEALthy Brain and Cognitive Development (HBCD) study will longitudinally chart brain development in a large sample (projected n=7,200) of infants through age 10 years with multimo...

After years of development and testing, we are happy to present our work in "Diffusion MRI Processing in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study: Innovations and Applications"! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... A thread:

This work was made possible through the contributions of an excellent team of collaborators @csi-lab.bsky.social @felenae.bsky.social

Together, these results suggest that gray matter features - particularly those reflecting microstructural integrity - may complement the existing pool of imaging biomarkers for early CSVD-related cognitive decline.

Our second key finding: Gray matter integrity measures in these regions were significantly associated with lower general cognitive ability after adjustment for age, sex, and education.

Our first key finding: Higher CSVD burden was linked to widespread, regionally specific gray matter abnormalities. These included altered diffusivity, tissue integrity, and thickness in the cingulate, insular, and temporal cortices, as well as the hippocampus.

We analyzed neuroimaging and cognitive data from 2,603 participants of the population-based Hamburg City Health Study. Using multi-modal MRI we derived a composite CSVD burden score and assessed regional gray matter micro- and macrostructure.

Cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is a major contributor to vascular cognitive impairment. While a lot of attention is focused on CSVD-related white matter pathology, corresponding alterations in gray matter are less comprehensively understood.

Mapping the Association of Cerebral Small Vessel Disease, Gray Matter Integrity, and Cognitive Function | Neurology Background and ObjectivesCerebral small vessel disease (CSVD) is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment and dementia. While its impact on white matter is well documented, CSVD-relat...

Excited to share our new study, “Mapping the Association of Cerebral Small Vessel Disease, Gray Matter Integrity, and Cognitive Function”, now published in Neurology.

Paper: www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/...

Editorial: www.neurology.org/doi/10.1212/...

🚨 New paper in Nature Methods:
HippoMaps: multiscale cartography of the human hippocampus

Open-source tools & data to explore structure and function of the 🍤🧠 (histology, in/ex vivo MRI, iEEG)

Led by @jordandekraker.bsky.social

docs: hippomaps.readthedocs.io
paper: doi.org/10.1038/s415...

The 70% problem: Hard truths about AI-assisted coding A field guide and why we need to rethink our expectations

This great piece by @addyosmani.bsky.social resonates strongly with my recent experience using AI coding agents

AI chatbots are already biasing research — we must establish guidelines for their use now The academic community has looked at how artificial-intelligence tools help researchers to write papers, but not how they distort the literature scientists choose to cite.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

GitHub - jmumford/randomise-prep: Generate design matrices, contrasts, and scripts to set up FSL randomise analyses. Generate design matrices, contrasts, and scripts to set up FSL randomise analyses. - jmumford/randomise-prep

Do you ever wish you could just use python to pull together the files and code for running FSL's randomise? Me too! I made this: github.com/jmumford/ran... It will even replace the numbers in the file outputs with contrast names of your choosing (and replace corrp with 1minusp).

Launched in 2023, Imaging Neuroscience is now firmly established, with full indexing (PubMed, etc.) and 700 papers to date.

We're very happy to announce that we are able to reduce the APC to $1400.

Huge thanks to all authors, reviewers, editorial team+board, and MIT Press.

Signature White Matter Hyperintensity Locations Associated With Vascular Risk Factors Derived From 15 653 Individuals | Stroke BACKGROUND: White matter hyperintensities (WMHs) of presumed vascular origin are common in the elderly and are associated with vascular risk factors. There is evidence that vascular risk factors, in p...

Great new article by Matthijs Biesbroek and the Meta VCI Map Consortium now published in Stroke.

"Signature White Matter Hyperintensity Locations Associated With Vascular Risk Factors Derived From 15 653 Individuals"

www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10....

🚨 New preprint out! 🚨
“Translating the Transcriptome: A Connectomics Approach for Gene-Network Mapping and Clinical Application”
🔗 doi.org/10.1101/2025... 

🧵 A short thread:

I've been thinking a lot about the preprint in terms of my own career. I grew up academically in computational labs. My papers were abstract early on and they only got more abstract as I progressed. The model was: find a new exciting mathematical tool. Apply it to brain imaging data. Write it up. 1/

I still get chills

Meet Mike
*30+ years severe depression
*first hospitalized @ 13y
*20 meds
*3 rounds of ECT
*2 near-fatal suicide attempts

Mike felt joy for the first time in decades after we turned on his new brain pacemaker or PACE

see videos, read paper, follow thread
doi.org/10.31234/osf...

Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti...

Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️

Many-Two-One: Diverse Representations Across Visual Pathways Emerge from A Single Objective How the human brain supports diverse behaviours has been debated for decades. The canonical view divides visual processing into distinct "what" and "where/how" streams – however, their origin and inde...

🧠 NEW PREPRINT
Many-Two-One: Diverse Representations Across Visual Pathways Emerge from A Single Objective
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A neural manifold view of the brain - Nature Neuroscience Recent advances in neuroscience have revealed how neural population activity underlying behavior can be well described by topological objects called neural manifolds. Understanding how nature, nurture...

Check out our new review/perspective (w/ @juangallego.bsky.social & Devika Narain) on neural manifolds in the brain! It was a lot of fun to think through these ideas over the past couple of years, and I'm excited it's finally out in the world!

🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
📄: rdcu.be/ex8hW

Brain Surfaces of 70 primate species

1
To predict the behaviour of a primate, would you rather base your guess on a closely related species or one with a similar brain shape? We looked at brains & behaviours of 70 species, you’ll be surprised!

🧵Thread on our new preprint with @r3rt0.bsky.social , doi.org/10.1101/2025...

How can we best use AI in science?

Myself and 9 other research fellows from @imperial-ix.bsky.social use AI methods in domains from plant biology (🌱) to neuroscience (🧠) and particle physics (🎇).

Together we suggest 10 simple rules @plos.org 🧵

doi.org/10.1371/jour...

1/11 Excited to share our @Naturestudy led by @leonooi.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social

AI performance is known to scale with logarithm of sample size (Kaplan 2020), but in many domains, sample size can be # participants or # measurements...

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Image of a pink rose with peachy undertones

When you smell a rose, more than 800 different odorants enter your nose and bind to olfactory receptors expressed in the cell membranes of various neurons, which fire to create a pattern interpreted by the brain.
www.quantamagazine.org/how-smell-gu...

Kidney Function and Cerebral Small Vessel Disease

bit.ly/HeinzeRL25 (FREE)

@felenae.bsky.social @petersenm.bsky.social #CKD

The splendour of unthresholded brain maps apertureneuro.org/article/1406...

NetNeuroLab posters + talks at @ohbmofficial.bsky.social

synapse types! neurotransmission connectomes! mouse maps! neuromorphic networks! generative models! neuropeptides! ⤵️

a man in a leather jacket is looking up and saying `` big brain '' while standing in front of a building . ALT: a man in a leather jacket is looking up and saying `` big brain '' while standing in front of a building .

NSB Lab (past & present) has a host of workshops, talks, symposia, and posters to present at #OHBM2025!

On Tuesday, Daniel Margulies and @alexfornito.bsky.social are running the educational session on Brain Modes, Components, and Gradients. Interested in whole-brain structure and function...?

Amazing new paper on individual development of E/I balance during adolescence, first-authored by @amnsbr.bsky.social!

Read @ Science Advances: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Bonus: Amin developed a tool to run biophysical network modelling on GPUs – because why shouldn't he?
cubnm.readthedocs.io

RELEASE THE KRAKEN(CODER)!
Ever struggle deciding which connectome pipeline to use or want to map between structure and function? Our multi-modal connectome mapping and fusion tool-the Krakencoder-can help! Brilliant Keith Jamison led this work, code available! www.nature.com/articles/s41...