Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Propagation of cortical neural activity is required for processing and transmission of information among neuronal populations. Cortical signal propagations have been reported in animals and humans using diverse recording techniques. Previous reports suggest that cortical propagation occurs along a putative sensorimotor-association axis. Moreover, group-level cross-sectional studies show that these hierarchical cortical propagations evolve during development in youth and vary with cognitive task demands. However, it remains unclear how cortical propagations are coupled with the underlying brain structure and whether they can be used as imaging biomarkers to predict inter-individual differences in major domains of cognition - such as executive function - that are impacted in diverse neuropsychiatric conditions and require top-down control. Capitalizing on the availability of large-scale neuroinformatic infrastructure at PennLINC lab and University of Pennsylvania, the goal of the proposed project is to chart the within-individual evolution of cortical propagations in youth, delineate how these propagations are constrained by brain structure, and describe how individual differences in top-down cortical propagations are related to transdiagnostic executive dysfunction across psychiatric disorders in youth. Leveraging high-quality, large-scale longitudinal and cross-sectional neuroimaging and cognitive data resources available at PennLINC and capitalizing on my experience in network science, novel analytic methods and the research environment at Penn, this project will delineate both the normative development of top-down cortical propagations and abnormalities associated with transdiagnostic executive dysfunction. Altogether, the proposed project will accelerate my transition to running an independently supported research program in the future that will continue to study the intersection of computational psychiatry, brain development and large-scale data science.