Andrew Reid PhD

In our new preprint, we describe a novel methodology for (1) identifying the most probable "core" tract trajectory for two arbitrary brain regions, and (2) estimating tract-specific anisotropy (TSA) at all points along this trajectory. We describe the outcomes of regressing this TSA metric against participants' age and sex. Our hope is that this new method can serve as a complement to the popular TBSS approach, where researchers desire to investigate effects specific to a pre-established set of ROIs.

The term "connectome" was introduced in a seminal 2005 PNAS article, as a sort of analogy to the genome. However, unlike genomics, the methods available to study human connectomics remain poorly defined and difficult to interpret. In particular, the use of diffusion-weighted imaging approaches to estimate physical connectivity is fraught with inherent limitations, which are often overlooked in the quest to publish "connectivity" findings. Here, I provide a brief commentary on these issues, and highlight a number of ways neuroscience can proceed in light of them.