Biology subjects

Weigard, A.

Publications and source records attributed to Weigard, A..

13 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Longitudinal associations between task-control network functioning, cognition, and the environment in early adolescence

Neural maturation in the "task-control" frontoparietal and dorsal attention networks is thought to support the development of adolescents' cognitive and adaptive functioning. Further, theory suggests that family and neighborhood contexts shape brain network development. Yet, few longitudinal studies have examined the co-development of brain network mechanisms with cognitive and adaptive functioning or with environmental factors that could shape the maturation of these mechanisms. The present study addressed these gaps. We used longitudinal data spanning late childhood (Mage=10 years) to early adolescence (Mage=12) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (n=4862). Stable and construct-valid neural signatures of task-control network functioning were estimated using longitudinal bifactor modeling of neural responses to cognitive demand during the n-back task. Multivariate latent change-score models were used to examine co-development of this signature with cognitive efficiency (drift rate from the diffusion model), teacher-reported attention problems, family conflict, and neighborhood safety. Models accounted for baseline family income. Robust reciprocal relations between task-control activation and cognitive efficiency were identified and the latent change scores for efficiency and task-control activation were positively correlated. Similar reciprocal associations were observed between cognitive efficiency and attention problems. Baseline family income predicted the rate of change in task-control network functioning. This study demonstrates that task-control network functioning co-develops with cognition, which in turn supports attentional functioning development across early adolescence. Further, findings highlight the utility of this neural signature of task-control network functioning for understanding the neural basis of cognitive development and the mechanisms through which environmental experiences shape brain and behavior.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Somatomotor disconnection links sleep duration with socioeconomic context, screen time, cognition, and psychopathology

BackgroundSleep is critical for healthy brain development and emotional wellbeing, especially during adolescence when sleep, behavior, and neurobiology are rapidly evolving. Theoretical reviews and empirical research have historically focused on how sleep influences mental health through its impact on higher-order brain systems. No studies have leveraged data-driven network neuroscience methods to uncover interpretable, brain-wide signatures of sleep duration in adolescence, their socio-environmental origins, or their consequences for cognition and mental health. MethodsHere, we implement graph theory and component-based predictive modeling to examine how a multimodal index of sleep duration is associated with intrinsic brain architecture in 3,173 youth (11-12 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study. ResultsWe demonstrate that network integration/segregation exhibit a strong, generalizable multivariate association with sleep duration. We next identify a single component of brain architecture centered on a single network as the dominant contributor of this relationship. This component is characterized by increasing disconnection of a lower-order system - the somatomotor network - from other systems, with shorter sleep duration. Finally, greater somatomotor disconnection is associated with lower socioeconomic resources, longer screen times, reduced cognitive/academic performance, and elevated externalizing problems. ConclusionsThese findings reveal a novel neural signature of shorter sleep in adolescence that is intertwined with environmental risk, cognition, and psychopathology. By robustly elucidating the key involvement of an understudied brain system in sleep, cognition, and psychopathology, this study can inform theoretical and translational research directions on sleep to promote neurobehavioral development and mental health during the adolescent transition.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2024

Assessing neurocognitive maturation in early adolescence based on baby and adult functional brain landscapes

Adolescence is a period of growth in cognitive performance and functioning. Recently, data-driven measures of brain-age gap, which can index cognitive decline in older populations, have been utilized in adolescent data with mixed findings. Instead of using a data-driven approach, here we assess the maturation status of the brain functional landscape in early adolescence by directly comparing an individuals resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) to the canonical early-life and adulthood communities. Specifically, we hypothesized that the degree to which a youths connectome is better captured by adult networks compared to infant/toddler networks is predictive of their cognitive development. To test this hypothesis across individuals and longitudinally, we utilized the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study at baseline (9-10 years; n = 6,489) and 2-year-follow-up (Y2: 11-12 years; n = 5,089). Adjusted for demographic factors, our anchored rsFC score (AFC) was associated with better task performance both across and within participants. AFC was related to age and aging across youth, and change in AFC statistically mediated the age-related change in task performance. In conclusion, we showed that a model-fitting-free index of the brain at rest that is anchored to both adult and baby connectivity landscapes predicts cognitive performance and development in youth.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Socioeconomic resources in youth are linked to divergent patterns of network integration and segregation across the brain's transmodal axis

Socioeconomic resources (SER) calibrate the developing brain to the current context, which can confer or attenuate risk for psychopathology across the lifespan. Recent multivariate work indicates that SER levels powerfully influence intrinsic functional connectivity patterns across the entire brain. Nevertheless, the neurobiological meaning of these widespread alterations remains poorly understood, despite its translational promise for early risk identification, targeted intervention, and policy reform. In the present study, we leverage the resources of graph theory to precisely characterize multivariate and univariate associations between household SER and the functional integration and segregation (i.e., participation coefficient, within-module degree) of brain regions across major cognitive, affective, and sensorimotor systems during the resting state in 5,821 youth (ages 9-10 years) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. First, we establish that decomposing the brain into profiles of integration and segregation captures more than half of the multivariate association between SER and functional connectivity with greater parsimony (100-fold reduction in number of features) and interpretability. Second, we show that the topological effects of SER are not uniform across the brain; rather, higher SER levels are related to greater integration of somatomotor and subcortical systems, but greater segregation of default mode, orbitofrontal, and cerebellar systems. Finally, we demonstrate that the effects of SER are spatially patterned along the unimodal-transmodal gradient of brain organization. These findings provide critical interpretive context for the established and widespread effects of SER on brain organization, indicating that SER levels differentially configure the intrinsic functional architecture of developing unimodal and transmodal systems. This study highlights both sensorimotor and higher-order networks that may serve as neural markers of environmental stress and opportunity, and which may guide efforts to scaffold healthy neurobehavioral development among disadvantaged communities of youth.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Flexible adaptation of task-positive brain networks predicts efficiency of evidence accumulation

Efficiency of evidence accumulation (EEA), an individuals ability to selectively gather goal-relevant information to make adaptive choices, is thought to be a key neurocomputational mechanism associated with cognitive functioning and transdiagnostic risk for psychopathology. However, the neural basis of individual differences in EEA is poorly understood, especially regarding the role of largescale brain network dynamics. We leverage data from over 5,000 participants from the Human Connectome Project and Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study to demonstrate a strong association between EEA and flexible adaptation to cognitive demand in "task-positive" frontoparietal and dorsal attention networks, which explains 36%-39% of the variance across individuals in EEA. Notably, individuals with higher EEA displayed divergent task-positive network activation across n-back task conditions: higher activation under high cognitive demand (2-back) and lower activation under low demand (0-back). These findings suggest that brain networks flexible adaptation to cognitive demands is a key neural underpinning of EEA.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2023

Neighborhood air pollution is negatively associated with neurocognitive maturation in early adolescence

Adolescence is a key period of neurocognitive maturation. Exposure to high levels of air pollutants have been associated with brain differences in youth, though the relevance of these brain findings to behavioral outcomes such as cognitive development is less clear. In this study, we used the US Environmental Protection Agencys thresholds for unhealthy levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), Ozone (O3), and NO2 pollutants to compare youth exclusively exposed to high levels of each pollutant to their respective socioeconomically-matched low-pollution peers over a two-year period in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study. No youth in ABCD study were found to be at or above the unhealthy threshold for NO2. Separate multivariate analyses for PM2.5 (NHigh=348; Ncontrol=279) and O3 (NHigh=355; Ncontrol=324) resulted in two very similar neurocognitive latent variables loading positively on cortical functional maturation and task performance, and negatively on cortical grey matter thickness. We found a significant difference in this neurocognitive maturation latent variable over time between the high-pollution and control groups from 9-10 to 11-12 years of age, such that maturation of cortical networks, increase in task performance, and cortical thinning were significantly higher in the control groups. These results were adjusted for parental income and education and youths age, sex, race/ethnicity, site, head-motion, scanner, general factor of psychopathology, pubertal status, and area deprivation index, in addition to the matching between high-pollution and control groups. In conclusion, exposure to high levels of PM2.5 and O3 is associated with lags in normative neurocognitive maturation in early adolescence.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2022

Socioeconomic Resources are Associated with Distributed Alterations of the Brain's Intrinsic Functional Architecture in Youth

Little is known about how exposure to limited socioeconomic resources (SER) in childhood gets "under the skin" to shape brain development, especially using rigorous whole-brain multivariate methods in large, adequately powered samples. The present study examined resting state functional connectivity patterns from 5,821 youth in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, employing multivariate methods across three levels: whole-brain, network-wise, and connection-wise. Across all three levels, SER was associated with widespread alterations across the connectome. However, critically, we found that parental education was the primary driver of neural associations of SER. These parental education associations were robust to additional tests for confounding by head motion, and they exhibited notable concentrations in somatosensory and subcortical regions. Moreover, parental education associations with the developing connectome were partially accounted for by home enrichment activities, childs cognitive abilities, and childs grades, indicating interwoven links between parental education, child stimulation, and child cognitive performance. These results add a new data-driven, multivariate perspective on links between household SER and the childs developing functional connectome.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2021

Cognitive process modeling addresses context independence violations in the ABCD Study stop-signal task

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is a longitudinal neuroimaging study of unprecedented scale that is in the process of following over 11,000 youth from middle childhood though age 20. However, a design feature of the studys stop-signal task violates "context independence", an assumption critical to current non-parametric methods for estimating stop-signal reaction time (SSRT), a key measure of inhibitory ability in the study. This has led some experts to call for the task to be changed and for previously collected data to be used with caution. We present a formal cognitive process model, the BEESTS-ABCD model, that provides a mechanistic explanation for the impact of this design feature, describes key behavioral trends in the ABCD data, and allows biases in SSRT estimates resulting from context independence violations to be quantified. We use the model to demonstrate that, although non-parametric SSRT estimates generally preserve the rank ordering of participants SSRT values, failing to account for context independence violations can lead to erroneous inferences in several realistic scenarios. Nonetheless, as the BEESTS-ABCD model can be used to accurately recover estimates of SSRT and other mechanistic parameters of interest from ABCD data, the impact of such violations can be effectively mitigated.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Brain Connectivity Patterns in Children Linked to Neurocognitive Abilities

The development of objective brain-based measures of individual differences in psychological traits is a longstanding goal of clinical neuroscience. Here we show that reliable objective markers of childrens neurocognitive abilities can be built from measures of brain connectivity. The sample consists of 5,937 9- and 10-year-olds in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development multi-site study with high-quality functional connectomes that capture brain-wide connectivity. Using multivariate methods, we built predictive neuromarkers for a general factor of neurocognitive ability as well as for a number of specific cognitive abilities (e.g., spatial reasoning, working memory). Neuromarkers for the general neurocognitive factor successfully predicted scores for held-out participants at 19 out of 19 held-out sites, explaining over 14% of the variance in their scores. Neuromarkers for specific neurocognitive abilities also exhibited statistically reliable generalization to new participants. This study provides the strongest evidence to date that objective quantification of psychological traits is possible with functional neuroimaging.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

Connectomic Alterations Linked to Transdiagnostic Risk for Psychopathology at the Transition to Adolescence

BACKGROUNDConvergent research identifies a general factor ("P factor") that confers transdiagnostic risk for psychopathology. However, brain functional connectivity patterns that underpin the P factor remain poorly understood, especially at the transition to adolescence when many serious mental disorders have their onset. OBJECTIVEIdentify a distributed connectome-wide neurosignature of the P factor and assess the generalizability of this neurosignature in held out samples. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTSThis study used data from the full baseline wave of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) national consortium study, a prospective, population-based study of 11,875 9- and 10-year olds. Data for this study were collected from September 1, 2016 to November 15, 2018 at 21 research sites across the United States. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURESWe produced whole brain functional connectomes for 5,880 youth with high quality resting state scans. We then constructed a low rank basis set of 250 components that captures interindividual connectomic differences. Multi-level regression modeling was used to link these components to the P factor, and leave-one-site-out cross-validation was used to assess generalizability of P factor neurosignatures to held out subjects across 19 ABCD sites. RESULTSThe set of 250 connectomic components was highly statistically significantly related to the P factor, over and above nuisance covariates alone (ANOVA nested model comparison, incremental R-squared 6.05%, {chi}2(250) =412.1, p<4.6x10-10). In addition, two individual connectomic components were statistically significantly related to the P factor after Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons (t(5511)= 4.8, p<1.4x10-06; t(5121)= 3.9, p<9.7x10-05). Functional connections linking control networks and default mode network were prominent in the P factor neurosignature. In leave-one-site-out cross-validation, the P factor neurosignature generalized to held out subjects (average correlation between actual and predicted P factor scores across 19 held out sites=0.13; pPERMUTATION<0.0001). Additionally, results remained significant after a number of robustness checks. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCEThe general factor of psychopathology is associated with connectomic alterations involving control networks and default mode network. Brain imaging combined with network neuroscience can identify distributed and generalizable signatures of transdiagnostic risk for psychopathology during emerging adolescence.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2020

The ABCD Stop Signal Data: Response to Bissett et al.

This paper responds to a recent critique by Bissett and colleagues (Bissett et al., eLife, In Press) of the fMRI Stop task being used in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study (ABCD Study(R)). The critique focuses primarily on a design feature of the task that the authors contend lead to a violation of race model assumptions (i.e., that the Go and Stop processes are fully independent) which are relevant to the calculation of the Stop Signal Reaction Time, a measure of the inhibition process. Bissett and colleagues also raise a number of secondary concerns. In this response we note that satisfying race model assumptions is a pernicious challenge for Stop task designs but also that the race model is quite robust against violations of its assumptions. Most importantly, while Bissett et al. raise conceptual concerns with the task we focus here on analyses of both the performance and the neuroimaging data and we conclude that the concerns appear to have minimal impact on the neuroimaging data (the validity of which do not rely on race model assumptions) and have far less of an impact on the performance data than the critique suggests. We note that Bissett et al. did not apply any performance-based exclusions to the data they analyzed, that a number of the trial coding errors that they flagged were already identified and corrected in the ABCD annual data releases, that a number of the secondary concerns reflect sensible design decisions and, indeed, that their own computational modeling of the ABCD Stop task suggests the problems they identify have just a modest impact on the rank ordering of individual differences in subject performance. In this paper, we list some adjustments that have been made to the task and some new flags that are now added to the annual, curated data releases. We stress that the ABCD data are fully available to the scientific community who are empowered to apply whatever inclusion and exclusion criteria they deem appropriate for their analyses and we conclude that the ABCD Stop task yields valuable data that researchers can use to track adolescent neurodevelopment.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2019

Cognitive modeling informs interpretation of go/no-go task-related neural activations and their links to externalizing psychopathology

BackgroundIndividuals with ADHD and other forms of externalizing psychopathology tend to display poor behavioral performance on the go/no-go task, which is thought to reflect deficits in inhibitory control. However, clinical neuroimaging studies using this paradigm have yielded conflicting results, raising basic questions about what the task measures and which aspects of the task relate to clinical outcomes of interest. We aimed to provide a clearer understanding of how neural activations from this paradigm relate to the cognitive mechanisms that underlie performance and the implications of these relationships for clinical research.\n\nMethods143 emerging adults (ages 18-21) performed the go/no-go task during fMRI scanning. We used the diffusion decision model (DDM), a mathematical modeling approach, to quantify distinct neurocognitive processes that underlie go/no-go performance. We then correlated DDM parameters with brain activation across several standard go/no-go contrasts and assessed relationships of DDM parameters and associated neural measures with clinical ratings.\n\nResultsFronto-parietal activations on correct inhibition trials, which have typically been assumed to isolate neural processes involved in inhibition, were unrelated to either individuals response biases or their efficiency of task performance. In contrast, responses to false alarms in brain regions putatively responsible for error monitoring were strongly related to more efficient performance on the task and correlated with externalizing behavior and ADHD symptoms.\n\nConclusionsOur findings cast doubt on conventional interpretations of go/no-go task-related activations as reflecting inhibition functioning. We instead find that error-related contrasts provide clinically-relevant information about neural systems involved in monitoring and optimizing cognitive performance.

neuroscience↗

bioRxiv2018

Prediction of Neurocognitive Profiles in Youth From Resting State fMRI

Difficulties with higher-order cognitive functions in youth are a potentially important vulnerability factor for the emergence of problematic behaviors and a range of psychopathologies. This study examined 2,013 9-10 year olds in the first data release from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development 21-site consortium study in order to identify resting state functional connectivity patterns that predict individual-differences in three domains of higher-order cognitive functions: General Ability, Speed/Flexibility, and Learning/Memory. We found that connectivity patterns involving task control networks and default mode network were prominently implicated in predicting individual differences across participants across all three domains. In addition, for General Ability scores specifically, we observed consistent cross-site generalizability, with statistically significant predictions in 14 out of 15 held-out sites. These findings demonstrate that resting state connectivity can be leveraged to produce generalizable markers of neurocognitive functioning. Additionally, they highlight the importance of task control-default mode network inter-connections as a major locus of individual differences in cognitive functioning in early adolescence.

neuroscience↗