Publications

Publication Highlights

Growth charts of brain morphometry for preschool children

  • Brain development from 1 to 6 years of age anchors a wide range of functional capabilities and carries early signs of neurodevelopmental disorders. However, quantitative models for depicting brain morphology changes and making individualized inferences are lacking, preventing the identification of early brain atypicality during this period.

  • This work reveals age dependence of brain morphometrics in preschool children;
  • Constructs growth curve models for cortical thickness and volume of brain regions;
  • Proposes typical types of age dependence among cortical and subcortical regions;
  • Provides models for individualized evaluation of brain developmental states;
  • Accurate recognition of children with language developmental delay.

  • Zhang H, Li J, Su X, Hu Y, Liu T, Ni S, et al. (2022): Growth charts of brain morphometry for preschool children. NeuroImage 255: 119178. full text

Dynamic tracking of state anxiety via multi-modal data and machine learning

  • Existing measures of state anxiety, such as the commonly used State Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S), mainly rely on subjective questionnaires with low temporal resolution. Quantitative representations of state anxiety based on psychological and physiological responses are still lacking, which limits the dynamic tracking of changing state anxiety levels in an anxiety-inducing paradigm.
  • We propose a state anxiety dynamic tracking model based on psychological and physiological data, which reflects the dynamic changes of individual state anxiety under high temporal resolution.
  • This model can accurately measure state anxiety at resting state using only objective and easily accessible physiological signals, providing a sensitive measure of state anxiety level for future research on affective brain-computer interaction and anxiety regulation.
  • Ding Y, Liu J, Zhang X, Yang Z (2022): Dynamic Tracking of State Anxiety via Multi-Modal Data and Machine Learning. Front Psychiatry 13: 757961. full text

Impact of inter-individual variability on the estimation of default mode network in temporal concatenation group ICA

  • We found that inter-subject variability in data impact the performance of temporal-concatenated ICA, a commonly used group-level ICA approach, to estimate the group-level default mode network (DMN).

  • We showed that increased inter-subject variability caused inaccurate estimation of DMN and strong dependence on the number-of-component setting in ICA.

  • This study calls for caution when applying TC-GICA to datasets expected to have large inter-individual variability, such as pooling different experimental groups of subjects

  • Hu Y, Yang Z, 2021. Impact of inter-individual variability on the estimation of default mode network in temporal concatenation group ICA. Neuroimage. full text

Abnormal asymmetry of thalamic volume moderates stress from parents and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents with social anxiety disorder

  • We found that adolescents with social anxiety disorder exhibit significantly abnormal asymmetry in thalamus volume. This asymmetry becomes more evident in the relative older group (14-17), supporting brain developmental abnormalities in children and adolescents with SAD.
  • This asymmetry significantly weakens the relationships between parental attachment and the overall anxiety level of adolescents. The findings further reveal the interactions between physiological and chronic stress in children and adolescents with SAD.
  • Zhang Y, Liu W, Lebowitz ER, Zhang F, Hu Y, Liu Z, Yang H, Wu J, Wang Y, Silverman WK, Yang Z, Cheng W, 2020. Abnormal asymmetry of thalamic volume moderates stress from parents and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents with social anxiety disorder. Neuropharmacology.full text

Reliability maps of individual differences reflected in naturalistic imaging

  • This paper presents voxel-wise and parcel-wise test-retest reliability maps of individual variability reflected in naturalistic imaging. We found that 1/3 voxels reflected reliable inter-individual similarity in an emotion-evoking movie.
  • Some regions exhibited “trait-like” inter-individual similarity and reliability. That is, the inter-individual similarity remained stable between the two movie-viewing sessions with a 1-week interval, and the reliability of the inter-individual similarity remained consistent across different contents of the emotion-evoking movie.
  • Gao, J., Chen, G., Wu, J., Wang, Y., Hu, Y., Xu, T., Zuo, X., Yang, Z., 2020. Reliability map of individual differences reflected in inter-subject correlation in naturalistic imaging. Neuroimage 223, 117277. full text
  • We share the resultant reliability maps here: https://osf.io/dnkg8/

A naturalistic imaging approach for individualized psychiatric imaging

  • We developed a naturalistic imaging approach that helps to identify schizophrenia patients when they watch a movie in an MRI scan. This approach does not assume a common brain response of patients and, therefore, it is suitable for psychiatric applications where biological heterogeneity is a significant issue.
  • Yang, Z., Wu, J., Xu, L., Deng, Z., Tang, Y., Gao, J., Hu, Y., Zhang, Y., Qin, S., Li, C., Wang, J., 2019. Individualized psychiatric imaging based on inter-subject neural synchronization in movie watching. Neuroimage. full text

Altered gray matter volume and structural co-variance in adolescents with social anxiety disorder

  • We provided evidence for a delayed and unsynchronized development of the fronto-limbic system of adolescents with social anxiety disorder. We found significant co-variance in grey matter volume of orbitofrontal gyrus, insula, and amygdala in typically developing adolescents, but this co-variance relationship was disrupted in adolescents with social anxiety disorder.
  • Liu, Z., Hu, Y., Zhang, Y., Liu, W., Zhang, L., Wang, Y., Yang, H., Wu, J., Cheng, W., Yang, Z., 2020. Altered gray matter volume and structural co-variance in adolescents with social anxiety disorder: Evidence for a delayed and unsynchronized development of the fronto-limbic system. Psychol. Med. full text

Deficits in precuneus network are associated with auditory hallucinations in Schizophrenia

  • In a sample of first-episode drug-naive schizophrenia patients and matched healthy controls, we found that the functional connectivity within the precuneus network (PCN) distinguishes the schizophrenia patients with auditory hallucinations from those without auditory hallucinations and the healthy controls. In contrast, we did not detect a significant inter-group difference in the functional connectivity of the default mode network (DMN). These findings support different roles of PCN and DMN in functional connectivity deficits in schizophrenia.
  • Guo, Q., Hu, Y., Zeng, B., Tang, Y., Li, G., Zhang, T., Wang, Jinhong, Northoff, G., Li, C., Goff, D., Wang, Jijun, Yang, Z., 2020. Parietal memory network and default mode network in first-episode drug-naïve schizophrenia: Associations with auditory hallucination. Hum. Brain Mapp. full text

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