Biology subjects

Varoquaux, G.

Publications and source records attributed to Varoquaux, G..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2018

Brain-based ranking of cognitive domains to predict schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a devastating brain disorder that disturbs sensory perception, motor action, and abstract thought. Its clinical phenotype implies dysfunction of various mental domains, which has motivated a series of theories regarding the underlying pathophysiology. Aiming at a predictive benchmark of a catalogue of cognitive functions, we developed a bottom-up machine-learning strategy and provide a proof of principle in a multi-site clinical dataset (n=324). Existing neuroscientific knowledge on diverse cognitive domains was first condensed into neuro-topographical maps. We then examined how the ensuing meta-analytic cognitive priors can distinguish patients and controls using brain morphology and intrinsic functional connectivity. Some affected cognitive domains supported well-studied directions of research on auditory evaluation and social cognition. However, rarely suspected cognitive domains also emerged as disease-relevant, including self-oriented processing of bodily sensations in gustation and pain. Such algorithmic charting of the cognitive landscape can be used to make targeted recommendations for future mental health research.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Prediction and inference diverge in biomedicine:Simulations and real-world data

In the 20th century many advances in biological knowledge and evidence-based medicine were supported by p-values and accompanying methods. In the beginning 21st century, ambitions towards precision medicine put a premium on detailed predictions for single individuals. The shift causes tension between traditional methods used to infer statistically significant group differences and burgeoning machine-learning tools suited to forecast an individuals future. This comparison applies the linear model for identifying significant contributing variables and for finding the most predictive variable sets. In systematic data simulations and common medical datasets, we explored how statistical inference and pattern recognition can agree and diverge. Across analysis scenarios, even small predictive performances typically coincided with finding underlying significant statistical relationships. However, even statistically strong findings with very low p-values shed little light on their value for achieving accurate prediction in the same dataset. More complete understanding of different ways to define important associations is a prerequisite for reproducible research findings that can serve to personalize clinical care.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2016

Predicting brain-age from multimodal imaging data captures cognitive impairment

The disparity between the chronological age of an individual and their brain-age measured based on biological information has the potential to offer clinically-relevant biomarkers of neurological syndromes that emerge late in the lifespan. While prior brain-age prediction studies have relied exclusively on either structural or functional brain data, here we investigate how multimodal brainimaging data improves age prediction. Using cortical anatomy and whole-brain functional connectivity on a large adult lifespan sample (N = 2354, age 19-82), we found that multimodal data improves brain-based age prediction, resulting in a mean absolute prediction error of 4.29 years. Furthermore, we found that the discrepancy between predicted age and chronological age captures cognitive impairment. Importantly, the brain-age measure was robust to confounding effects: head motion did not drive brain-based age prediction and our models generalized reasonably to an independent dataset acquired at a different site (N = 475). Generalization performance was increased by training models on a larger and more heterogeneous dataset. The robustness of multimodal brain-age prediction to confounds, generalizability across sites, and sensitivity to clinically-relevant impairments, suggests promising future application to the early prediction of neurocognitive disorders.\n\nHighlightsO_LIBrain-based age prediction is improved with multimodal neuroimaging data.\nC_LIO_LIParticipants with cognitive impairment show increased brain aging.\nC_LIO_LIAge prediction models are robust to motion and generalize to independent datasets from other sites.\nC_LI

neuroscience↗