Audrey Luo
@audreycluo.bsky.social
MD/PhD Candidate @PennMedicine studying functional connectivity & white matter development at PennLINC 🧠 previously @Yale
Amazing talk at #OHBM2026! Wow 🤯
Audrey Luo@audreycluo.bsky.social · 5mo agoWe 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
What matters most for childhood brain organization? We analyzed 649 variables. The answer: Socioeconomics (SES); with brain patterns pointing at sleep & stress as drivers. Even brain-IQ associations were better explained by SES. In Science today: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
White matter tracts form the structural foundation of brain networks, yet how structural connectivity develops across the whole connectome remains unclear. In our recent @natcomms.nature.com article, we report a continuous, robust developmental pattern along the S-A connectional axis.😁
Happy to see this paper from @xiaoyuxuu.bsky.social and @zaixucui.bsky.social out on how the development of structural connectivity aligns with the sensorimotor-association axis www.nature.com/articles/s41...! Exciting convergence with work from @audreycluo.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Mapping the spatiotemporal continuum of structural connectivity development across the human connectome in youth - Nature Communications
This study identifies a spatiotemporal continuum of structural connectivity development along the sensorimotor-association connectional axis during youth and further demonstrates its implications in b...
nature.com
Xiaoyu Xu@xiaoyuxuu.bsky.social · 2mo agoWhite matter tracts form the structural foundation of brain networks, yet how structural connectivity develops across the whole connectome remains unclear. In our recent @natcomms.nature.com article, we report a continuous, robust developmental pattern along the S-A connectional axis.😁
How much does the childhood environment shape the brain? In our new preprint, we study the exposome (300+ environmental exposures) and link it to white matter structure in 8,000+ kids. 🧠✨ 🔗 Read the preprint: bit.ly/4wfsybZ 🧵 Thread below
White matter reflects the childhood exposome
The childhood environment is critical for brain development. However, most neuroimaging studies examine individual environmental measures (e.g., socioeconomic status) or a limited set of exposures, obscuring how the combination of complex, real-world exposures jointly influence brain development. Here we investigated how white matter shape and tissue properties are linked to the childhood exposome, a multidimensional measure capturing over 300 environmental exposures. Using multi-shell diffusion MRI from 8,183 children (ages 9-10) in the ABCD study, we quantified microstructural and macrostructural properties across 62 person-specific white matter tracts. The exposome showed widespread and highly replicable associations with both white matter microstructure and macrostructure: more advantaged environments were associated with larger tract macrostructure and lower orientation dispersion. Principal component analysis revealed that the dominant axis of exposome-white matter covariation aligns with the cortical sensorimotor-association hierarchy, such that tracts spanning this hierarchy exhibit the strongest associations with the exposome. Multivariate models demonstrated that patterns of white matter features explained 25% of the variance in the exposome in unseen individuals. Notably, white matter-based prediction of cognition was markedly reduced after accounting for the exposome (~82% reduction in explained variance), indicating that brain-cognition associations overlap substantially with variance captured by the exposome. These findings generalized to independent data from the Healthy Brain Network (n=869), which differs substantially from ABCD in MRI acquisition, participant selection, and childhood environments. Together, these results suggest that white matter architecture strongly reflects the childhood environment. ### Competing Interest Statement A.A.B. has consulted for Octave Bioscience and holds equity in Centile Bioscience. RB is on the Advisory Board and holds equity in Taliaz Health. D.A.F. is a founder of Turing Medical. Any potential conflict of interest has been reviewed and managed by the University of Minnesota. D.A.F. is an inventor of the FIRMM Technology 2198 (FIRMM, real-time monitoring and prediction of motion in MRI scans, exclusively licensed to Turing Medical). Any potential conflict of interest has been reviewed and managed by the University of Minnesota. This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (T32MH019112 to S.L.M.; R37MH125829 to D.A.F. and T.D.S.; 2R01MH112847 to R.T.S. and T.D.S.; R01MH120482 to T.D.S.; 2R01MH113550 to T.D.S.; R01MH123550 to R.T.S; F30MH138048 to K.Y.S.; RF1MH121868, RF1MH121867, RF1MH126699, R01AG060942, U19AG066567, R01EY033628, and R01EB027585 to A.R.; R01MH134886 to R.B.; T32MH016804 and T32MH018951 to V.J.S; R01MH133843 to A.A.B.; F31MH136685 to J.B.). S.L.M. was supported by the Hartwell Foundation (S.L.M.); G.S. was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). A.S.K. is supported by a NARSAD Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. M.D.H. was supported by the German Research Foundation (project number 572317568). LMS was supported by a NSF SBE Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (#2507497).
bit.ly
✨Excited to share that our new preprint, "Mapping developmental patterns of intrinsic timescale", is now available on bioRxiv!! 📚 doi.org/10.64898/202...
doi.org
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...
Beyond delighted to see this awesome paper from superstar Audrey Luo now out. See her wonderful thread below re: two highly-replicable axes of white matter development in youth.
Audrey Luo@audreycluo.bsky.social · 5mo agoWe 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
3 datasets! 2 axes! 1 beautiful piece of developmental science from @audreycluo.bsky.social
Audrey Luo@audreycluo.bsky.social · 5mo agoWe 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
I couldn't find a tool to plot different #neuroimaging data in one consistent style, so I made one! Meet yabplot (yet another brain plot) - a #Python package for (sub)cortex & tracts.🧠 - Simple API - Built-in atlases - Custom atlas support 🔗 github.com/teanijarv/ya... (drop a ⭐️!)
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
New research out in @nature.com delineates two replicable axes of human white matter development ft. @audreycluo.bsky.social & @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social (Psych) @chopresearch.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Check out this exciting new paper from @joelleba.bsky.social linking white matter to brain organization and cognition!! 🧠 Joëlle has transformed what started as a fun group project at Neurohackademy into a beautiful manuscript 🌈 congrats!!
Joëlle Bagautdinova@joelleba.bsky.social · 7mo agoEver wondered how white matter tracts actually map onto the cortical hierarchy and cognition—beyond the usual “projection vs association” labels? Our new preprint tackles exactly that! 🧠✨ doi.org/10.64898/202... Thread below 🧵
Excited to share that our new review, "Depression as a disease of white matter network disruption: Learning from Multiple Sclerosis," is out now in Biological Psychiatry! We propose MS as a powerful model for studying how white matter network changes contribute to depression.
Depression as a disease of white matter network disruption: Learning from Multiple Sclerosis
Depression is a common and debilitating psychiatric disorder that is associated with substantial morbidity and mortality. For nearly 40 years, scientists have attempted to localize depression in the b...
biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com
🧠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...
Happy to share our review "Investigating hierarchical critical periods in human neurodevelopment” in @npp-journal.bsky.social! We examine neurobiological, environmental & behavioral evidence for human critical periods in sensory and association cortex +discuss new research directions rdcu.be/eMkVU 🧵
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:
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...
biorxiv.org
🚨 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
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...
nature.com
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
Golia Shafiei@goliashf.bsky.social · last yr.(1/18) Now out on BioRxiv‼️ Reproducible Brain Charts: An open data resource for mapping brain development and its associations with mental health | doi.org/10.1101/2025... Funded by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
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/...
🍄 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.
Ted Satterthwaite@ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social · 12mo agoCONGRATS TO DOCTOR @audreycluo.bsky.social !!! Last week, Dr. Luo knocked our collective socks off with a thesis defense for the ages. Her presentation on "Axes of Hierarchical Brain Development" was magnificent -- beautiful science, presented in an incredibly accessible and engaging way. WOO!!!!
@audreycluo.bsky.social has had one of the most impressive graduate careers I've ever seen. Kudos!!!!
Ted Satterthwaite@ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social · 12mo agoCONGRATS TO DOCTOR @audreycluo.bsky.social !!! Last week, Dr. Luo knocked our collective socks off with a thesis defense for the ages. Her presentation on "Axes of Hierarchical Brain Development" was magnificent -- beautiful science, presented in an incredibly accessible and engaging way. WOO!!!!
So grateful to @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social for being the most wonderful PhD adviser and @pennlinc.bsky.social for being my lab home. My heart is full 🩷🧡💛
Ted Satterthwaite@ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social · 12mo agoCONGRATS TO DOCTOR @audreycluo.bsky.social !!! Last week, Dr. Luo knocked our collective socks off with a thesis defense for the ages. Her presentation on "Axes of Hierarchical Brain Development" was magnificent -- beautiful science, presented in an incredibly accessible and engaging way. WOO!!!!
Integrating and interpreting brain maps | doi.org/10.1016/j.ti... Imaging and recording technologies make it possible to map multiple biological features of the brain. How can these features be conceptually integrated into a coherent understanding of brain structure and function? ⤵️
#NGG is proud to present our next Thesis Defense given by Audrey Luo @audreycluo.bsky.social of the Satterthwaite Lab @ted-satterthwaite.bsky.social ! Please join us in person or virtually (DM us for the link) on 8/5. Best of luck, Audrey! #PhAlmostDone 🥳
Such beautiful and careful work from @valeriejsydnor.bsky.social, as always!!
Valerie Jill Sydnor@valeriejsydnor.bsky.social · last yr.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...
The ABCD Study 6.0 release is finally here! 🧠 Apply for data access here @theabcdstudy.bsky.social www.nbdc-datahub.org
NBDC Data Hub
NIH Brain Development Cohorts (NBDC) Data Sharing Platform: Unifying ABCD and HBCD data management in one powerful platform.
nbdc-datahub.org
Alert! ... for the child development world! @fluxsociety.bsky.social @fitngin.bsky.social The Healthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study has released its first data wave - it’s massive. Check here: docs.hbcdstudy.org and here: nbdc-datahub.org Here’s why it matters 🧠🍼
@kevin-y-sun.bsky.social will be presenting his work on "Copy Number Variant Risk Scores Are Associated with Personalized Functional Brain Network Topography" Wed, June 25, 13:15 - 15:15 & Thus, June 26, 13:45 - 15:45
