Postdoctoral Scholar in the Pitt Lab of Neurocognitive Development 🧠 she/her
brain development | plasticity | environment | multi-modal MRI
trying to fall down rabbit holes to recreate Alice in Wonderland
Valerie Jill Sydnor
We present the LARGEST normative model of the brain’s white matter microstructure: 54,583 subjects, 4-91 yrs, 19 datasets. We derived lifespan centile curves for DTI FA, MD, RD, AD, detecting anomalies for dementia, and Mild Cognitive Impairment: doi.org/10.1038/s414... ⤵️
Live on bioRxiv🎉🧬🧠! We @BhaduriLab use perturb-seq in human cortical tissues to make sense of the shifting molecular trajectories that form the human prefrontal cortex. (1/7)
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
🧠‼️ Socioeconomic variables show the strongest associations with the brain out of 649 measures—surpassing cognition and mental health. Grateful for the chance to write a perspective with @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social about @smarek0502.bsky.social and team's important findings! tinyurl.com/bdhk6bc8
How much does the childhood environment shape the brain?
In our new preprint, we study the exposome (300+ environmental exposures) and link it to white matter structure in 8,000+ kids. 🧠✨
🔗 Read the preprint: bit.ly/4wfsybZ
🧵 Thread below
What matters most for childhood brain organization?
We analyzed 649 variables.
The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers.
Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES.
In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
OHBM 2026 is here 🧠! Excited to share my work on thalamocortical & hippocampal development at:
🥐 TANGO Workshop on The Integrative Thalamus, June 14
🇫🇷 Symposium "More than a relay: Examining the role of the thalamus in brain organisation, development, disorder", June 17 9 am
🍷 Poster session, M/T
Holden Thorp is an institutionalist. He's been a university chancellor, provost, now EiC of Science. When institutionalists pull the fire alarm, we listen, because the call to action he issued this week exposes the dire nature of the threat we are facing. 1/
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Happy to see this paper from @xiaoyuxuu.bsky.social and @zaixucui.bsky.social out on how the development of structural connectivity aligns with the sensorimotor-association axis www.nature.com/articles/s41...! Exciting convergence with work from @audreycluo.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Very excited about this project, led by @zachladwig.bsky.social
We show that an individual’s lateral prefrontal cortex has reliable and highly detailed network organization missed in past group approaches.
Full🧵 coming soon!
Excited to see this out in PNAS. A fabulous project by Adam Pines and the Williams lab: across psychedelics (LSD, Psilo, MDMA), species, and datasets, a very consistent story—reduced propagation of activity into the default mode network (DMN). Congrats Adam! 🧠🍄
www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
The cerebral cortex drives human cognition through the coordinated activity of discrete cortical areas, each harboring specialized molecular, structural and functional characteristics. Central to this organization is the prefrontal cortex (PFC), a hub for executive function that displays disproportionate expansion in humans and selective vulnerability to neurodevelopmental disorders. Previous work has identified a collection of PFC-enriched marker genes with dynamic expression trajectories, and re-analysis of these datasets converge these markers into 18 distinct molecular signatures of spatiotemporal PFC identity. However, the intrinsic gene networks that coordinate these molecular signatures to shape the human PFC remains unclear. Through pooled CRISPR activation screens in human primary cortical tissues, we have evaluated the ability of PFC-enriched transcription factors to intrinsically pattern PFC molecular identity. Our screens identify novel roles for the neurogenesis regulator, YBX1, in the activation of human PFC fate. In parallel screens and knock-down experiments in human cortical organoids, we define how YBX1 acts in concert with other PFC determinants to activate molecular signatures of PFC identity. Our findings support a model in which PFC patterning is orchestrated by cohorts of intrinsic determinants that initiate, potentiate, and modulate PFC gene signatures, conferring robustness to the development of the human PFC. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. NIH, R00NS111731, R01MH132689, UM1MH130991, RF1MH132662, U24HG002371 Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, https://ror.org/03a63f080, Young Investigator Award Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, https://ror.org/052csg198, Sloan Fellowship Rose Hills Foundation, Innovation Award Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund, Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Simons Foundation, https://ror.org/01cmst727, Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Ablon Trust, Ablon Scholar Award Department of Biological Chemistry, UCLA Zamenhof Scholarship UCLA Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine, Innovation Award, Stem Cell Research Training Program University of California, Los Angeles, https://ror.org/046rm7j60, Eugene V. Cota-Robles Award California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, https://ror.org/033m8b439, DISC0-14514, DISC4-16337 National Science Foundation, Graduate Research Fellowship Program
The childhood environment is critical for brain development. However, most neuroimaging studies examine individual environmental measures (e.g., socioeconomic status) or a limited set of exposures, obscuring how the combination of complex, real-world exposures jointly influence brain development. Here we investigated how white matter shape and tissue properties are linked to the childhood exposome, a multidimensional measure capturing over 300 environmental exposures. Using multi-shell diffusion MRI from 8,183 children (ages 9-10) in the ABCD study, we quantified microstructural and macrostructural properties across 62 person-specific white matter tracts. The exposome showed widespread and highly replicable associations with both white matter microstructure and macrostructure: more advantaged environments were associated with larger tract macrostructure and lower orientation dispersion. Principal component analysis revealed that the dominant axis of exposome-white matter covariation aligns with the cortical sensorimotor-association hierarchy, such that tracts spanning this hierarchy exhibit the strongest associations with the exposome. Multivariate models demonstrated that patterns of white matter features explained 25% of the variance in the exposome in unseen individuals. Notably, white matter-based prediction of cognition was markedly reduced after accounting for the exposome (~82% reduction in explained variance), indicating that brain-cognition associations overlap substantially with variance captured by the exposome. These findings generalized to independent data from the Healthy Brain Network (n=869), which differs substantially from ABCD in MRI acquisition, participant selection, and childhood environments. Together, these results suggest that white matter architecture strongly reflects the childhood environment. ### Competing Interest Statement A.A.B. has consulted for Octave Bioscience and holds equity in Centile Bioscience. RB is on the Advisory Board and holds equity in Taliaz Health. D.A.F. is a founder of Turing Medical. Any potential conflict of interest has been reviewed and managed by the University of Minnesota. D.A.F. is an inventor of the FIRMM Technology 2198 (FIRMM, real-time monitoring and prediction of motion in MRI scans, exclusively licensed to Turing Medical). Any potential conflict of interest has been reviewed and managed by the University of Minnesota. This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (T32MH019112 to S.L.M.; R37MH125829 to D.A.F. and T.D.S.; 2R01MH112847 to R.T.S. and T.D.S.; R01MH120482 to T.D.S.; 2R01MH113550 to T.D.S.; R01MH123550 to R.T.S; F30MH138048 to K.Y.S.; RF1MH121868, RF1MH121867, RF1MH126699, R01AG060942, U19AG066567, R01EY033628, and R01EB027585 to A.R.; R01MH134886 to R.B.; T32MH016804 and T32MH018951 to V.J.S; R01MH133843 to A.A.B.; F31MH136685 to J.B.). S.L.M. was supported by the Hartwell Foundation (S.L.M.); G.S. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). A.S.K. is supported by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. M.D.H. was supported by the German Research Foundation (project number 572317568). LMS was supported by a NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (#2507497).
Although research has bipartisan support in the US Congress, and trust in science is above 75% across the country, the Trump administration seems as determined as ever to mortally wound the nation’s s...
