Advancing knowledge of human development, developmental disabilities, and neurodegenerative diseases.
A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is part of a new multi-institution effort to better understand Alzheimer’s disease in adults with Down syndrome. Adults with Down syndrome are at high risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease beginning in their late 40s, because of their unique biology. The vast majority will eventually develop the …
Demonstration of the ability of MPnRAGE to correct for severe motion artifacts in a 7 year old girl. Retrospective motion correction greatly reduced motion-induced blurring in both structural T1-weighted images and quantitative T1 maps. The correction greatly improves the reliability of brain imaging measurements in children. The plots indicate the estimated amount of head motions that were corrected.
White matter microstructure, essential for efficient and coordinated transmission of neural communications, undergoes pronounced development during the first years of life, while deviations to this neurodevelopmental trajectory likely result in alterations of brain connectivity relevant to behavior. Hence, systematic evaluation of white matter microstructure in the normative brain is critical for a neuroscientific approach to both typical and atypical early behavioral development.
Individuals undergoing a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan often need to minimize movements for up to 10 minutes at a time to maximize scan quality. That can be challenging for many people.
Empathy, the ability to understand others' emotions, can occur through perspective taking and experience sharing. Neural systems active when adults empathize include regions underlying perspective taking (e.g. medial prefrontal cortex; MPFC), and experience sharing (e.g. inferior parietal lobule; IPL).
Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by accumulation of beta amyloid (Aβ) and hyperphosphorylated tau proteins, which neuropathology suggests follow distinct spatiotemporal patterns.
Mapping White Matter Microstructure in the One Month Human Brain Legend: Matched coronal and axial slices through the of the population averaged diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) parameters (Left). Gestation corrected age relationships of fractional anisotropy (FA), radial diffusivity (RD) and neurite density (νIC) for left hemisphere white …
Title: Investigating the Microstructural Correlation of White Matter in Autism Spectrum Disorder Legend: Graphical visualization (‘connectogram’) of brain white matter networks of the examined typically developing (TD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) groups. Individual white matter tracts were broadly grouped by region (outside labels), while the individual tract is indicated by the inside of the …
Title: Amygdala and hippocampal volume is reduced in children exposed to different forms of adversity Legend: Volumetric comparisons for the left amygdala (A) and left (B) and right (C) hippocampus. For each graph, standardized residuals controlling for total gray matter, pubertal stage, and sex are shown on the vertical axis, and group is shown on the …
A new study by Waisman Center investigators Andy Alexander, PhD, professor of medical physics and psychiatry, Janet Lainhart, MD, professor of psychiatry and Brittany Travers, PhD, assistant professor of kinesiology, indicates a nerve bundle at the base of the brain is structurally compromised in people with autism. The study was recently featured by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.
