Biology subjects

Cabalo, D. G.

Publications and source records attributed to Cabalo, D. G..

6 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Multimodal Precision Neuroimaging of the Individual Human Brain at Ultra-high fields

Multimodal neuroimaging, in particular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows for non-invasive examination of human brain structure and function across multiple scales. Precision neuroimaging builds upon this foundation, enabling the mapping of brain structure, function, and connectivity patterns with high fidelity in single individuals. Highfield MRI, operating at magnetic field strengths of 7 Tesla (T) or higher, increases signal-to-noise ratio and opens up possibilities for gains spatial resolution. Here, we share a multimodal Precision Neuroimaging and Connectomics (PNI) 7T MRI dataset. Ten healthy individuals underwent a comprehensive MRI protocol, including T1 relaxometry, magnetization transfer imaging, T2*-weighted imaging, diffusion MRI, and multi-state functional MRI paradigms, aggregated across three imaging sessions. Alongside anonymized raw MRI data, we release cortex-wide connectomes from different modalities across multiple parcellation scales, and supply "gradients" that compactly characterize spatial patterning of cortical organization. Our precision MRI dataset will advance our understanding of structure-function relationships in the individual human brain and is publicly available via the Open Science Framework.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

MULTIMODAL GRADIENTS UNIFY LOCAL AND GLOBAL CORTICAL ORGANIZATION

AO_SCPLOWBSTRACTC_SCPLOWSpecialization of brain areas and subregions, as well as their integration into large-scale networks are key principles in neuroscience. Consolidating both local and global cortical organization, however, remains challenging. Our study developed a new approach to map global cortex-wise similarities of microstructure, structural connectivity, and functional interactions, and integrate these patterns with maps of cortical arealization. Our analysis combined repeated high-field in-vivo 7 tesla (7T) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) data collected in 10 healthy adults with a recently introduced probabilistic post-mortem atlas of cortical cytoarchitecture. We obtained multimodal eigenvectors describing cortex-wide gradients at the level of microstructural covariance, structural connectivity, and intrinsic functional interactions, and then assessed inter- and intra-area differences in cortex-wide embedding based on these multimodal eigenvectors. Inter-area similarities followed a canonical sensory-fugal gradient, with primary sensorimotor cortex being the most distinctive from all other areas, while paralimbic regions were least distinctive. This pattern largely corresponded to functional connectivity variations across different tasks collected in the same participants, suggesting that the degree of global cortical integration mirrors the functional diversity of brain areas across contexts. When studying heterogeneity within areas, we did not observe a similar relationship, despite overall higher heterogeneity in association cortices relative to paralimbic and idiotypic cortices. The results were replicated in a different dataset. Our findings highlight a close coupling between cortical arealization and global cortical motifs in shaping specialized versus integrative human brain function. SO_SCPLOWIGNIFICANCEC_SCPLOWOur work situates cytoarchitecture-derived cortical areas within multimodal gradients of cortical microstructure, connectivity, and function derived from high-definition multimodal neuroimaging. We demonstrated that primary sensory and motor areas show most distinctive gradient profiles while paralimbic areas were least distinctive, overall recapitulating a sensory-fugal axis. This axis was shown to relate to the diversity of cortical areas across different functional contexts, and findings could be replicated across an independent dataset. Overall, our work shows how frameworks of cortical arealization and macroscale gradients converge in shaping functional specialization versus integration in the human brain.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

HippoMaps: Multiscale cartography of the human hippocampal formation

The hippocampus has a unique microarchitecture, is situated at the nexus of multiple macroscale functional networks, contributes to numerous cognitive as well as affective processes, and is highly susceptible to brain pathology across common disorders. These features make the hippocampus a model to understand how brain structure covaries with function, in both health and disease. Here, we introduce HippoMaps, an open access toolbox and online data warehouse for the mapping and contextualization of subregional hippocampal data in the human brain (http://hippomaps.readthedocs.io). HippoMaps capitalizes on a unified hippocampal unfolding approach as well as shape intrinsic registration capabilities to allow for cross-subject and cross-modal data aggregation. We initialize this repository with an unprecedented combination of hippocampal data spanning 3D ex-vivo histology, ex-vivo 9.4 Tesla MRI, as well as in-vivo structural MRI and resting-state functional MRI (rsfMRI) obtained at 3 and 7 Tesla, together with intracranial encephalography (iEEG) recordings in epilepsy patients. HippoMaps also contains validated tools for spatial map association analysis in the hippocampus that correct for autocorrelation. All code and data are compliant with community standards, and comprehensive online tutorials facilitate broad adoption. Applications of this work span methodologies and modalities, spatial scales, as well as clinical and basic research contexts, and we encourage community feedback and contributions in the spirit of open and iterative scientific resource development.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Differential reorganization of episodic and semantic memory systems in epilepsy-related mesiotemporal pathology

Declarative memory encompasses episodic and semantic divisions. Episodic memory captures singular events with specific spatiotemporal relationships, while semantic memory houses context-independent knowledge. Behavioural and functional neuroimaging studies have revealed common and distinct neural substrates of both memory systems, implicating mesiotemporal lobe (MTL) regions such as the hippocampus and distributed neocortices. Here, we explored declarative memory system reorganization in patients with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), as a human disease model to test the impact of variable degrees of MTL pathology on memory function. Our cohort included 31 patients with TLE as well as 60 age and sex-matched healthy controls and all participants underwent episodic and semantic retrieval tasks during a multimodal MRI session. The functional MRI tasks were closely matched in terms of stimuli and trial design. Capitalizing on non-linear connectome gradient mapping techniques, we derived task-based functional topographies during episodic and semantic memory states, both in the MTL and in neocortical networks. Comparing neocortical and hippocampal functional gradients between TLE patients and healthy controls, we observed a marked topographic reorganization of both neocortical and MTL systems during episodic memory states. In the neocortex, alterations were characterized by reduced functional differentiation in patients in lateral temporal and midline parietal cortices in both hemispheres. In the MTL, on the other hand, patients presented with a more marked functional differentiation of posterior and anterior hippocampal segments ipsilateral to the seizure focus and pathological core, indicating perturbed intrahippocampal connectivity. Semantic memory reorganization was also found in bilateral lateral temporal and ipsilateral angular regions, while hippocampal functional topographies were unaffected. Leveraging MRI proxies of MTL pathology, we furthermore observed alterations in hippocampal microstructure and morphology are associated with TLE-related functional reorganization during episodic memory. Moreover, correlation analysis and statistical mediation models revealed that these functional alterations contributed to behavioural deficits in episodic, but again not semantic memory in patients. Altogether, our findings suggest that semantic processes rely on distributed neocortical networks, while episodic processes are supported by a network involving both the hippocampus and neocortex. Alterations of such networks can provide a compact signature of state-dependent reorganization in conditions associated with MTL damage, such as TLE.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Atypical connectome topography and signal flow in temporal lobe epilepsy

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is one of the most common pharmaco-resistant epilepsies in adults. While hippocampal pathology is the hallmark of this condition, emerging evidence indicates that brain alterations extend beyond the mesiotemporal epicenter and affect macroscale brain function and cognition. We studied macroscale functional reorganization in TLE, explored structural substrates, and examined cognitive associations. We investigated a multisite cohort of 95 patients with pharmaco-resistant TLE and 95 healthy controls using state-of-the-art multimodal 3T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We quantified macroscale functional topographic organization using connectome dimensionality reduction techniques and estimated directional functional flow using generative models of effective connectivity. We observed atypical functional topographies in patients with TLE relative to controls, manifesting as reduced functional differentiation between sensory/motor networks and transmodal systems such as the default mode network, with peak alterations in bilateral temporal and ventromedial prefrontal cortices. TLE-related topographic changes were consistent in all three included sites and reflected reductions in hierarchical flow patterns between cortical systems. Integration of parallel multimodal MRI data indicated that these findings were independent of TLE-related cortical grey matter atrophy, but mediated by microstructural alterations in the superficial white matter immediately beneath the cortex. The magnitude of functional perturbations was robustly associated with behavioral markers of memory function. Overall, this work provides converging evidence for macroscale functional imbalances, contributing microstructural alterations, and their associations with cognitive dysfunction in TLE.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Head motion correction shapes functional network estimates: evidence from healthy and Parkinson's disease cohorts

An open discussion in studies of intrinsic brain functional connectivity is the mitigation of head motion-related artifacts, particularly in the presence of peculiar symptomatology such as in Parkinsons disease (PD). Previous studies show that Independent Component Analysis (ICA) denoising improves the reproducibility of functional connectivity findings by detecting sources of non-neural signals. However, there is still no consensus about which pre-processing pipeline should be applied in natural high motion populations such as PD, particularly in relation to novel functional network descriptions derived from dynamic connectivity analyses. In this study, we investigated how different pre-processing pipelines affect intrinsic brain connectivity metrics, both static and dynamic, derived from a group of young healthy controls (HC) and a group of PD participants. A total of 20 HC and 20 PD subjects participated in this 3 T MRI study. Resting-state functional MRI images were used to test the effects of the pre-processing pipeline of static (sFC) and temporal-varying functional connectivity (dFC) estimations. Both MRI datasets were pre-processed using three different workflows differing in the motion correction approach: (i) standard motion realignment (mc); (ii) motion outlier detection and deweighting based on image intensity change estimations (DVARS) and (iii) ICA-based noise removal using reference noise features (AROMA). Furthermore, the PD dataset was also processed with a fourth method by applying an ICA-based denoising (FIX), previously trained on the HC group. sFC analysis was performed using Group ICA, by temporally concatenating different pre-processing types in pairs of different runs. Two types of dFC analyses were considered: innovation-driven co-activation patterns (iCAPs) and co-activation patterns (CAPs). CAPs allow dFC estimations that do not require the deconvolution of the hemodynamic response function and its derivative, thus potentially being less sensitive to head-motion related noise. We found that regardless of substantial head motion differences in the two groups, sFC results were consistent across denoising strategies. Conversely, dFC was extremely sensitive to denoising strategies, particularly for the PD group with the transient-based dFC analyses. Indeed, the use of the peak-based dFC framework enables the detection of time-varying networks but in a way that is highly dependent on the motion correction pipeline. In conclusion, we show that dynamic functional network representations are highly sensitive to both head motion and to fMRI denoising methods. These findings stress the importance of considering and reporting these experimental aspects to help with the reproducibility and interpretation of different studies. Future work is needed to further investigate transient-based dFC strategies that are more robust to head motion.

neuroscience↗