Leong Scholar presents on white matter connectivity in brain networks

Jaden Dilda, PhD student in Psychology at the University of Toronto, and Leong Scholar, recently presented research findings from his graduate studies at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society Annual Meeting in Toronto on April 15.  He provides a summary of his poster presentation.

Socioeconomic status (SES) impacts cognitive development; however, the biological underpinnings of this impact are still not understood. My project is focused on testing whether white matter network organization underlies the relationship between SES and general cognitive ability in adolescents who are 9- and 10-year-olds. Our team constructed white matter connectomes and extracted multiple measures of SES and cognition for 3,946 cases from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a multisite, longitudinal developmental study for the U.S. We found significant negative correlations between several measures of SES, such as income and parental education, and global efficiency—a measure of whole-brain network organization. Global efficiency was found to partially mediate the impact of several measures of SES on general cognitive ability. However, additional analysis since then has shown that much of this effect is driven by SES-based differences in brain volume. The next steps for the project involve 1) completing analysis on all 11,880 ABCD participants, 2) assessing the impact of sex and race on the observed correlations and mediations, and then 3) using the created connectomes to study brain structure-specific connectivity.

Question: What is the most valuable thing you have learned from this project so far?

Answer: I have learned how to effectively leverage large datasets to answer complex questions.

View his poster presentation here.