Highly replicable multisite patterns of adolescent white matter maturation www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.04...

Huge thanks to the incredible team of 50 co-authors who made this possible! Special thanks to our lab replicator + dMRI guru @cieslakmatt.bsky.social, the UMN team led by @drdamienfair.bsky.social, and my incredibly supportive postdoc advisor @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social! Preprint: bit.ly/3QMLG0K

Takeaway #4:
These data are openly available!

To lower barriers, we release ABCC on NBDC/LASSO:

- >24,000 processed dMRI scans
- advanced microstructural metrics
- tractography + tabular summaries

Together, this is a major new resource for reproducible developmental neuroimaging.

Takeaway #3:
Image quality is more complicated than it seems.

Some commonly used QC covariates can bias developmental inference. If you are using advanced measures of microstructure (e.g., ICVF) it may not be necessary to include an image quality covariate in analyses.

Takeaway #2:
Not all dMRI measures of microstructure are the same!

Measures from advanced multi-shell models are more sensitive to development, more consistent with each other, and more robust to noise than tensor-derived measures. These should be prioritized in analyses!

Takeaway #1:
Harmonization is essential in multisite dMRI data!

Scanner effects are large and spatially structured; they can distort developmental patterns and reduce generalizability unless addressed carefully.

In ABCD, acquisition batch, age, and quality are partially aligned with one another. Given this collinearity, we found that including these age- and batch-aligned quality covariates can attenuate true developmental effects without mitigating noise in the data.

We compared automated QC metrics vs extensive manual ratings (😮‍💨) To our surprise (and joy!), dMRI contrast explains more microstructural variance than expert ratings.

Automated QC can outperform visual inspection at scale – saving hours of manual inspection.

How sensitive are dMRI metrics to quality?

FA was most susceptible to image quality. Notably, FA was most related to dMRI contrast, and NOT motion.

In contrast, advanced metrics like ICVF were overall much more robust to image quality – another plus of moving beyond the tensor.

Different scanners tell the same story; but what about different diffusion metrics?

Advanced metrics like ICVF, RTOP, and MKT, exhibited high convergence (ρ ≥ 0.93) in their spatial patterns of development.

However, tensor metrics like FA and MD were less consistent.

Do these developmental effects replicate across scanners?

Before harmonization, only modestly.

After harmonization: near-perfect correspondence across vendors.

With our harmonized data, we asked: which metrics best capture development? Advanced dMRI metrics (ICVF, MKT, and RTOP) showed much stronger age effects (>3x!!!) than traditional tensor metrics (FA and MD).

Bottom line?: Metric choice strongly impacts sensitivity to development.

Given these scanner differences, harmonization is essential! In unharmonized data, acquisition batch explained up to 70% of microstructural variance. We used cutting-edge longitudinal nonlinear harmonization, which eliminated these effects while preserving developmental effects.

ABCD has > 60 scanner batches (unique devices / software versions)!!! There were large differences in quality between scanner vendors (GE, Siemens, and Philips). In GE, image quality was related to software version, which itself was related to age! More on that later…

Data are distributed in the ABCD-BIDS Community Collection (ABCC). Derivatives include preprocessed images, over 30 microstructural maps from 4 software tools, 60+ white matter bundles, tidy tabular summaries of bundle-wise measures, and 40 automated image quality metrics.

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) is a powerful tool to study white matter maturation. In our new preprint, we process and distribute a new resource of >24,000 ABCD dMRI scans using open source tools! We then evaluate how methods shape inferences about development.

🔗 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

We think of white matter as the highways of the brain. But when we followed development along those highways, we were surprised. The journey is more complex than we thought. My final PhD paper, “Two Axes of White Matter Development”, is now out in @natcomms.nature.com! 🛣️🧠✨
🔗 bit.ly/wm2axes

List of members who support the SIG renewal List of members who support the SIG renewal Please provide the list of at least 12 OHBM members in good standing who support the SIG renewal and are willing to engage in the SIG activity. Name Email...

The OHBM OSSIG has been operating since 2016, hosting and promoting open science education for the OHBM community and beyond. SIGs must be renewed every 5 years. Please sign the following petition by Mon, Jan 26 to help us continue operating. Thank you!
docs.google.com/document/d/1...

neuroimaging | Satterthwaite Lab | UPenn www.satterthwaitelab.com Homepage for Satterthwaite lab neuroimaging | neurodevelopment | adolescence | psychiatry | machine learning | network science

#PenNLINC is recruiting a clinical coordinator / lab manager!!! Looking for someone who is good with both people + code, wants to learn to acquire + analyze imaging data. Alumni in this role have written 1st author papers + gone to top grad programs.

Website: www.pennlinc.io

Job: bit.ly/4ojvCir

BIG news- applications for our hackathon are NOW OPEN🎉 Apply now to join us in Florida in January 2026! The deadline for applications is DECEMBER 1st🚨 so apply today! For more info & to apply, check out Hackathon.ABCD-ReproNim.org 🎊

Want to learn more about the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study?👀 Check out the ABCD-ReproNim course! The Fall 2025 course is going on NOW✨ Students may have the opportunity to participate in the 2026 hackathon in Miami🏝️ For more info: abcd-repronim.org 🎉

🧠I am excited to announce that our manuscript introducing a new data resource – PennLEAD (Penn Longitudinal Executive functioning in Adolescent Development) – is now available on bioRxiv. Below are some details highlighting our data resource🧵funded by NIMH R01MH113550
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Diffusion MRI Processing in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study: Innovations and Applications The landmark ongoing HEALthy Brain and Cognitive Development (HBCD) study will longitudinally chart brain development in a large sample (projected n=7,200) of infants through age 10 years with multimo...

After years of development and testing, we are happy to present our work in "Diffusion MRI Processing in the HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study: Innovations and Applications"! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1.... A thread:

Psychedelic 5-HT2A receptor agonism alters neurovascular coupling and differentially affects neuronal and hemodynamic measures of brain function Nature Neuroscience - Padawer-Curry et al. show that the hallucinogenic 5-HT2A receptor agonist DOI alters neurovascular coupling in mice, with implications for the interpretation of human fMRI...

🚨 New science alert! Our cross-species study, now in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrates psychedelics distort how we should interpret functional brain imaging.
👇🧵

nature.com/articles/s41...
#Neuroscience #Psychedelics #BrainImaging

Excited to share that our work introducing the Reproducible Brain Charts (RBC) data resource is now published in Neuron!! 🎉

📚 Read the paper: authors.elsevier.com/c/1lpaF3BtfH...
🧠 Explore the RBC dataset: reprobrainchart.github.io

New preprint from stellar IRTG PhD student Amelie Rauland + team on white matter bundle reconstruction! Shows that WM bundles can be reliably extracted from simple 32-direction dMRI & features predict cognition - huge potential for legacy and clinical data. Thread 👇

www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...

SYPRES (Synthesis of Psychedelic Research Studies) logo

🍄 Our new living systematic review and meta-analysis on psilocybin for depression is out. Here's what we found and the open science infrastructure we built to support it 🧪🧵
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...

Congrats @audreycluo.bsky.social!! Celebrating a wonderful dissertation defense that shed novel, fundamental, and convincing insights into white matter development.

Human thalamocortical structural connectivity develops in line with a hierarchical axis of cortical plasticity - Nature Neuroscience Sydnor et al. developed a new tractography atlas of thalamocortical structural connections and applied it to three youth samples. They uncovered coordinated development between thalamic connectivity a...

Human thalamocortical connectivity matures along the cortex’s sensorimotor–association axis

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

How does the human brain coordinate hierarchical cortical development? Our work in Nature Neuroscience identifies a role for thalamocortical structural connectivity in the expression of hierarchical periods of cortical plasticity & environmental receptivity in youth 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...