top of page
  • Twitter
wb-brain-landing-logo-01.png

Lifespan Informatics & Neuroimaging Center

Innovation in data science and translational neuroscience to understand brain development and mental illness

RESEARCH

  Our research uses advanced analytics to integrate complex brain images and rich behavioral data.   Ultimately, we seek to map normal brain development and understand how alterations in brain maturation increase risk of psychiatric illness.

Research
RecentPubs

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Graham Portrait (Katonah).jpg

Parker Singleton, Brooke Sevchik

medRxiv

pdf-icon.png

Psilocybin treatment for symptoms of depression

Here, we present the results of a fully pre-registered, living systematic review on psilocybin treatment for depressive symptoms. The original studies included in our primary meta-analysis suggest promise: compared to control conditions, psilocybin showed a greater reduction in depression scores, greater treatment response, and higher remission rates. Sensitivity analyses revealed robust effects consistent with the primary model across a wide variety of design parameters and analysis choices, while also identifying key sources of heterogeneity in the literature. Meta-regression revealed psilocybin’s effect to be rapid and persistent over several weeks.
Notably, our living review will be regularly updated, with all data, code, and results openly available on our public website for the SYPRES initiative (Synthesis of Psychedelic Research Studies; sypres.io). Our continuously maintained database already includes over 200 total effect sizes, encompassing all depression timepoints and outcomes reported by arm in each of the 12 randomized controlled clinical trials included. We also release this database of effect sizes on Metapsy (metapsy.org), and provide an interactive online dashboard (metapsy.org/sypres/psilocybin-depression). This dashboard allows scientists, clinicians, and the broader public to explore the evolving evidence base. Moreover, the dashboard allows individuals to examine the influence of inclusion criteria, analysis choices, and subgroups on the variability of study-level effects across this expanding literature. As the first psilocybin therapies are poised for FDA approval in the next two years, we believe that this resource will rapidly grow to become an essential resource for researchers, clinicians, patients, and policymakers.

Graham Portrait (Katonah).jpg

Juliette Brook, Taylor Salo

bioRxiv

pdf-icon.png

Data resource for studying mood and sleep variability

Brain development during adolescence and early adulthood coincides with shifts in emotion regulation and sleep. Despite this, few existing datasets simultaneously characterize affective dynamics, sleep variation, and multimodal measures of brain development. Here, we describe the study protocol and initial release (n = 10) of an open data resource of neuroimaging paired with densely sampled behavioral measures in adolescents and young adults. All participants complete multi-echo functional MRI, compressed-sensing diffusion MRI, and advanced arterial spin-labeled MRI. Behavioral measures include ecological momentary assessment, actigraphy, extensive cognitive assessments, and detailed clinical phenotyping focused on emotion regulation. Raw and processed data are openly available without a data use agreement and will be regularly updated as accrual continues. Together, this resource will accelerate research on the links between mood, sleep, and brain development.

Graham Portrait (Katonah).jpg

Audrey Luo

bioRxiv

pdf-icon.png

Two Axes of White Matter Development

Despite decades of neuroimaging research, how white matter develops along the length of major tracts in humans remains unknown. Here, we identify fundamental patterns of white matter maturation by examining developmental variation along major, long-range cortico-cortical tracts in youth ages 5-23 years using diffusion MRI from three large-scale, cross-sectional datasets (total N = 2,710). Across datasets, we delineate two replicable axes of human white matter development. First, we find a deep-to-superficial axis, in which superficial tract regions near the cortical surface exhibit greater age-related change than deep tract regions. Second, we demonstrate that the development of superficial tract regions aligns with the cortical hierarchy defined by the sensorimotor-association axis, with tract ends adjacent to sensorimotor cortices maturing earlier than those adjacent to association cortices.

Ted
ted_edited.jpg

ted satterthwaite

Ted is the McLure II Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Research at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His research uses multi-modal neuroimaging to describe both normal and abnormal patterns of brain development, in order to better understand the origins of mental illnesses.

Lifespan Informatics and Neuroimaging Center

Richards Research Labs, 5th Floor

3700 Hamilton Walk

Philadelphia, PA 19104

Email: sattertt@pennmedicine.upenn.edu

bottom of page