Biology subjects

Treadway, M.

Publications and source records attributed to Treadway, M..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Assessing the distinct contributions of rostral and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex to cognitive control using temporal interference brain stimulation

The medial prefrontal cortex has been strongly implicated in a diverse array of cognitive functions in humans, including cognitive control and emotion regulation. Numerous studies have further proposed distinct functions for dorsomedial and rostromedial areas, but direct evidence from neuromodulation studies in healthy humans has been lacking due to the limitations of commonly used non-invasive neuromodulation techniques. Temporal interference (TI) stimulation is a recently developed technique for non-invasive deep brain stimulation that utilizes the frequency difference {Delta}[f] between pairs of high frequency electric fields to stimulate brain regions at depth and with improved precision compared to traditional techniques. Despite its theoretical potential, however, TI applications in humans have remained limited. Here, we examined the effects of TI stimulation to dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) and rostromedial prefrontal cortex (rmPFC) on cognitive control. Healthy adult participants (n = 32) were recruited and administered 20 Hz {Delta}[f] TI stimulation and 0 Hz {Delta}[f] sham stimulation in interleaved blocks while completing two variants of the Stroop Task, a well-established paradigm intended to measure cognitive control: the Color-Word and Affective Number Stroop. During the Color-Word Stroop, we found that 20 Hz {Delta}[f] TI stimulation of dmPFC and rmPFC relative to sham stimulation slowed down reaction times, with a significantly more pronounced slowing effect specific to incongruent trials for dmPFC stimulation as well as reduced accuracy. Importantly, effects of TI on dmPFC targets localized with fMRI differed markedly from dmPFC targeting based on a generic model, highlighting the importance of individualized targeting. For the Affective Stroop, we found that stimulation of dmPFC relative to sham stimulation facilitated increased reaction times in a valence specific-manner. This research provides novel evidence for distinct effects of neuromodulation in sub-regions of medial prefrontal cortex in healthy humans and sheds light on the strengths of TI as a non-invasive stimulation method for human cognitive neuroscience.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

St. Jude Cloud a Pediatric Cancer Genomic Data Sharing Ecosystem

Effective data sharing is key to accelerating research that will improve the precision of diagnoses, efficacy of treatments and long-term survival of pediatric cancer and other childhood catastrophic diseases. We present St. Jude Cloud (https://www.stjude.cloud), a cloud-based data sharing ecosystem developed via collaboration between St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital, DNAnexus, and Microsoft, for accessing, analyzing and visualizing genomic data from >10,000 pediatric cancer patients, long-term survivors of pediatric cancer and >800 pediatric sickle cell patients. Harmonized genomic data totaling 1.25 petabyes on St. Jude Cloud include 12,104 whole genomes, 7,697 whole exomes and 2,202 transcriptomes, which are freely available to researchers worldwide. The resource is expanding rapidly with regular data uploads from St. Judes prospective clinical genomics programs, providing public access as soon as possible rather than holding data back until publication. Three interconnected apps within the St. Jude Cloud ecosystem--Genomics Platform, Pediatric Cancer Knowledgebase (PeCan) and Visualization Community--provide a unique experience for simultaneously performing advanced data analysis in the cloud and enhancing the pediatric cancer knowledgebase. We demonstrate the value of the St. Jude Cloud ecosystem through use cases that classify 48 pediatric cancer subtypes by gene expression profiling and map mutational signatures across 35 subtypes of pediatric cancer.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2020

Glutamatergic adaptation to stress in medial prefrontal cortex underlies risk and resilience for pessimistic beliefs

Stress is a major risk factor for the development of mental illness, including major depressive disorder (MDD), yet the underlying biological mechanisms remain unclear. Particular challenges lie in disentangling adaptive versus maladaptive responses to repeated stress exposure. Preclinically, stress-induced changes in glutamatergic function have been frequently observed in the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a key region for mediating adaptive stress responses. Here, we examined stress-induced changes in mPFC glutamate using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) in four human samples varying in perceived stress exposure. Changes in mPFC glutamate following an acute stressor were reliably moderated by recent perceived stress in healthy controls. This adaptive glutamate response was absent in unmedicated individuals with MDD and was associated with excessively pessimistic beliefs as assessed via ecological momentary assessments over a 1-month follow-up period. Taken together, these data provide novel evidence for glutamatergic adaptation to stress in mPFC that is significantly disrupted in MDD.

neuroscience↗