Integrating cognition and systems neuroscience to understand child development

人类大脑有一个独特的组织。这个组织在生命的早期就出现了，甚至在我们出生之前，并在青春期和成年早期继续变化。大脑网络的出现和不断完善，将大脑的不同区域远距离连接起来，允许增加“功能专业化”。也就是说，这些网络变得更加专注于特定的认知过程。但是，这种网络逐渐出现的过程在个体之间存在着令人难以置信的差异，目前还不清楚为什么会存在这种多样性，它对认知有什么影响，或者随着时间的推移，什么因素可能会塑造它。该计划的目的是解决我们理解中的这些差距。我们开发和应用多种不同的分析工具，包括受人工智能启发的计算模型，并将其与大脑成像数据相结合。这种结合使我们能够解开典型和非典型的发展过程。这使我们能够解决以下问题：首先，我们如何捕捉儿童和青少年时期大脑发育中存在的令人难以置信的差异，以及这种差异是否映射到既定的诊断类别？其次，我们能否建立发展模型，将简单的生物学原理形式化，以捕捉复杂的发展现象？第三，我们能否利用这些模型来连接尺度和物种，以建立塑造发展的基本和因果机制？

The human brain has a characteristic organisation. This organisation emerges early in life, even before we are born, and continues to change through adolescence and into early adulthood. The emergence and continual refinement of brain networks, connecting different regions of the brain across large distances, allows for increasing ‘functional specialisation’. That is, these networks become more dedicated to particular cognitive processes. But this gradual process of network emergence is incredibly variable across individuals, and it is not clear why this diversity exists, what consequences it holds for cognition, or what factors might shape it over time. The purpose of this programme is to address these gaps in our understanding. We develop and apply multiple different analysis tools, including computational models inspired by artificial intelligence, and integrate these with brain imaging data. This combination allows us to unpack typical and atypical developmental processes. This allows us to address the following questions: Firstly, how do we capture the incredible variability in brain development that exists across childhood and adolescence, and does this variability map to established diagnostic categories? Secondly, can we build developmental models that formalise simple biological principles in order to capture complex developmental phenomena? Thirdly, can we use these models to bridge scales and species to establish fundamental and causal mechanisms that shape development?