Development of Amygdala Functional Connectivity

[amg9yn]

Research question(s)

How does early life experience affect development of amygdala-PFC functional connectivity? Can social relationships in middle/late childhood impact the trajectory of FC between the amygdala-PFC? Can individual differences in emotion regulation be partially explained by amygdala-PFC functional connectivity?

Description

This work is largely informed by Dr. Nim Tottenham's research on amygdala-prefrontal cortex functional connectivity in children. Work from Gee et al. (2013) suggests that there is a developmental shift in amygdala-prefrontal functional connectivity around ten years old, and that children who experience maternal deprivation exhibit accelerated development of this network.

I'm interested in exploring these ideas with the ABCD cohort and examining whether social relationships later in childhood can even have an impact, or if there is a limited time period early in life where trajectory of this network is especially sensitive. I'd also be interested in exploring how individual differences in amygdala FC impact things like emotion regulation and processing.

Tools and algorithms to be used

R, Python, FSL, seed-based correlation analysis

Skills we could use help with (optional)

As an undergrad who is still pretty new to all of this, I will definitely need some help with the functional connectivity analysis portion of the project. I've run SCA using FSL, but would appreciate guidance on whether this is the best method to use and how to incorporate some of the practices we've learned during the course (DataLad, containers, etc.)!

Assessment wise, I am familiar with some of the NIH Toolbox batteries, the CBCL, and the SRS, but I would greatly appreciate help from anyone who researches early life experience or the impact of familial and peer relationships and has familiarity with relevant assessments.

Suggested keywords/tags

functional connectivity, amygdala, early life adversity, social support, emotion regulation

[richford]

Hi @amg9yn, excited to see this project! I wanted to point out that there might be some overlap between this project and #7, where they will be doing some factor analysis or CCA of early life adversity measures.

If you want to, you could reach out to @avannucci to discuss different approaches to extract/transform your adversity measures. Completely optional of course.

[avannucci]

hi @amg9yn i work with Nim Tottenham and am very familiar with this work :-) , particularly on the early life adversity and functional connectivity concepts/data. In our project (see issue #7 ), we plan to extra dimensions of early life adversity from the ABCD data, and then look at associations between adversity dimensions and functional connectivity. Perhaps we can harmonize and/or combine our efforts for using the same adversity dimensions from our analysis to facilitate interpretation across studies? Feel free to slack me in the abcd-repronim to clarify areas of overlap and distinction, and strategies you plan to use. (Anna Vannucci)

[maegancalvert]

Hello! This project seems very interesting! I am currently completing a neuroimaging postdoc, but my PhD is in clinical psychology with a background in early life adversity, parent-child interactions, and emotion processes as a mediator of psychopathology and parenting behaviors. I currently have experience in python and would love to contribute if possible... My work email: mlcalvert@uams.edu gmail: maegan.calvert@gmail.com