Biology subjects

Skyberg, A. M.

Publications and source records attributed to Skyberg, A. M..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Widely Used Calculations of Intracranial Volume Provide Inaccurate Estimates in Developmental Cohorts: Evidence and Solutions for the Neuroimaging Community

Intracranial volume (ICV) is often estimated as part of automated neuroimaging processing pipelines and commonly used to account for and characterize cranial size. FreeSurfer's estimated intracranial volume (eTIV) produces implausible longitudinal estimates in developmental samples when using versions prior to FreeSurfer 8. Across two different adolescent datasets, we document eTIV changes of up to 39% between 1.5 - 2 year sessions for FreeSurfer 7, with errors more pronounced on Siemens scanners and in female participants. These errors are markedly reduced in FreeSurfer 8 and AssemblyNet. However, the widespread use of FreeSurfer 7 raises concern about developmental neuroimaging studies that utilize eTIV without quality control.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2026

Social Motivation and Hippocampal-Cortical Structural Development in Adolescent Girls

Adolescence is a fundamental developmental period marked by dramatic socio-affective and physiological changes, including shifts in social behavior and maturation of underlying brain architecture. In girls, this period coincides with the onset of the pubertal transition, which fundamentally influences motivated social behavior and neurodevelopment. The present study examines age- and pubertal maturation-related changes in social motivational goals and hippocampal and motivation-related cortical structural development in adolescent girls (n=154) across five timepoints. Social motivational goals showed substantial variability of each subdomain across age and pubertal development. Specifically, all social goals showed linear increases across age and pubertal stage, whereas goals centered around developing social competency increased non-linearly across age. Our neurodevelopmental findings align with established research, revealing volumetric increases of the hippocampus, and cortical thinning of the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) and rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC) across age and pubertal stages. Collectively, these results highlight simultaneous change in endorsement and prioritization of different social motivational goals across adolescence, and they underscore the simultaneous shifts in structural development in regions supporting social motivation and broader socio-affective development. This research highlights the importance of fostering positive social experiences during this critical developmental stage, with implications for adolescent well-being and social development.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Functional brain connectivity during social attention predicts individual differences in social skill

Social attention involves selectively attending to and encoding socially relevant information. We investigated the neural systems underlying the wide range of variability in both social attention ability and social experience in a neurotypical sample. Participants performed a selective social attention task while undergoing fMRI and completed self-report measures of social functioning. Using connectome-based predictive modeling, we demonstrated that individual differences in whole-brain functional connectivity patterns during selective attention to faces predicted task performance. Individuals with more cerebellar-occipital connectivity performed better on the social attention task, suggesting more efficient social information processing. Then, we estimated latent communities of autistic and socially anxious traits using exploratory graph analysis to decompose heterogeneity in social functioning between individuals. Connectivity strength within the identified social attention network was associated with social skills, such that more temporal-parietal connectivity predicted fewer challenges with social communication and interaction. These findings demonstrate that individual differences in functional connectivity strength during a selective social attention task are related to varying levels of self-reported social skill.

neuroscience↗