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James M. Bjork

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6 papers

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YNIMG Journal 2024 Journal Article

Effect of scanning duration and sample size on reliability in resting state fMRI dynamic causal modeling analysis

Liangsuo Ma
Sarah E. Braun
Joel L. Steinberg
James M. Bjork
Caitlin E. Martin
Larry D. Keen II
F. Gerard Moeller

Despite its widespread use, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) has been criticized for low test-retest reliability. To improve reliability, researchers have recommended using extended scanning durations, increased sample size, and advanced brain connectivity techniques. However, longer scanning runs and larger sample sizes may come with practical challenges and burdens, especially in rare populations. Here we tested if an advanced brain connectivity technique, dynamic causal modeling (DCM), can improve reliability of fMRI effective connectivity (EC) metrics to acceptable levels without extremely long run durations or extremely large samples. Specifically, we employed DCM for EC analysis on rsfMRI data from the Human Connectome Project. To avoid bias, we assessed four distinct DCMs and gradually increased sample sizes in a randomized manner across ten permutations. We employed pseudo true positive and pseudo false positive rates to assess the efficacy of shorter run durations (3.6, 7.2, 10.8, 14.4 min) in replicating the outcomes of the longest scanning duration (28.8 min) when the sample size was fixed at the largest (n = 160 subjects). Similarly, we assessed the efficacy of smaller sample sizes (n = 10, 20, …, 150 subjects) in replicating the outcomes of the largest sample (n = 160 subjects) when the scanning duration was fixed at the longest (28.8 min). Our results revealed that the pseudo false positive rate was below 0.05 for all the analyses. After the scanning duration reached 10.8 min, which yielded a pseudo true positive rate of 92%, further extensions in run time showed no improvements in pseudo true positive rate. Expanding the sample size led to enhanced pseudo true positive rate outcomes, with a plateau at n = 70 subjects for the targeted top one-half of the largest ECs in the reference sample, regardless of whether the longest run duration (28.8 min) or the viable run duration (10.8 min) was employed. Encouragingly, smaller sample sizes exhibited pseudo true positive rates of approximately 80% for n = 20, and 90% for n = 40 subjects. These data suggest that advanced DCM analysis may be a viable option to attain reliable metrics of EC when larger sample sizes or run times are not feasible.

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YNIMG Journal 2022 Journal Article

Reliability and stability challenges in ABCD task fMRI data

James T. Kennedy
Michael P. Harms
Ozlem Korucuoglu
Serguei V. Astafiev
Deanna M. Barch
Wesley K. Thompson
James M. Bjork
Andrey P. Anokhin

Trait stability of measures is an essential requirement for individual differences research. Functional MRI has been increasingly used in studies that rely on the assumption of trait stability, such as attempts to relate task related brain activation to individual differences in behavior and psychopathology. However, recent research using adult samples has questioned the trait stability of task-fMRI measures, as assessed by test-retest correlations. To date, little is known about trait stability of task fMRI in children. Here, we examined within-session reliability and long-term stability of individual differences in task-fMRI measures using fMRI measures of brain activation provided by the adolescent brain cognitive development (ABCD) Study Release v4.0 as an individual's average regional activity, using its tasks focused on reward processing, response inhibition, and working memory. We also evaluated the effects of factors potentially affecting reliability and stability. Reliability and stability (quantified as the ratio of non-scanner related stable variance to all variances) was poor in virtually all brain regions, with an average value of 0.088 and 0.072 for short term (within-session) reliability and long-term (between-session) stability, respectively, in regions of interest (ROIs) historically-recruited by the tasks. Only one reliability or stability value in ROIs exceeded the 'poor' cut-off of 0.4, and in fact rarely exceeded 0.2 (only 4.9%). Motion had a pronounced effect on estimated reliability/stability, with the lowest motion quartile of participants having a mean reliability/stability 2.5 times higher (albeit still 'poor') than the highest motion quartile. Poor reliability and stability of task-fMRI, particularly in children, diminishes potential utility of fMRI data due to a drastic reduction of effect sizes and, consequently, statistical power for the detection of brain-behavior associations. This essential issue urgently needs to be addressed through optimization of task design, scanning parameters, data acquisition protocols, preprocessing pipelines, and data denoising methods.

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YNIMG Journal 2019 Journal Article

Image processing and analysis methods for the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study

Donald J. Hagler
SeanN. Hatton
M. Daniela Cornejo
Carolina Makowski
Damien A. Fair
Anthony Steven Dick
Matthew T. Sutherland
B.J. Casey

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is an ongoing, nationwide study of the effects of environmental influences on behavioral and brain development in adolescents. The main objective of the study is to recruit and assess over eleven thousand 9-10-year-olds and follow them over the course of 10 years to characterize normative brain and cognitive development, the many factors that influence brain development, and the effects of those factors on mental health and other outcomes. The study employs state-of-the-art multimodal brain imaging, cognitive and clinical assessments, bioassays, and careful assessment of substance use, environment, psychopathological symptoms, and social functioning. The data is a resource of unprecedented scale and depth for studying typical and atypical development. The aim of this manuscript is to describe the baseline neuroimaging processing and subject-level analysis methods used by ABCD. Processing and analyses include modality-specific corrections for distortions and motion, brain segmentation and cortical surface reconstruction derived from structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI), analysis of brain microstructure using diffusion MRI (dMRI), task-related analysis of functional MRI (fMRI), and functional connectivity analysis of resting-state fMRI. This manuscript serves as a methodological reference for users of publicly shared neuroimaging data from the ABCD Study.

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YNICL Journal 2015 Journal Article

Inhibitory behavioral control: A stochastic dynamic causal modeling study comparing cocaine dependent subjects and controls

Liangsuo Ma
Joel L. Steinberg
Kathryn A. Cunningham
Scott D. Lane
James M. Bjork
Harshini Neelakantan
Amanda E. Price
Ponnada A. Narayana

Cocaine dependence is associated with increased impulsivity in humans. Both cocaine dependence and impulsive behavior are under the regulatory control of cortico-striatal networks. One behavioral laboratory measure of impulsivity is response inhibition (ability to withhold a prepotent response) in which altered patterns of regional brain activation during executive tasks in service of normal performance are frequently found in cocaine dependent (CD) subjects studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, little is known about aberrations in specific directional neuronal connectivity in CD subjects. The present study employed fMRI-based dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to study the effective (directional) neuronal connectivity associated with response inhibition in CD subjects, elicited under performance of a Go/NoGo task with two levels of NoGo difficulty (Easy and Hard). The performance on the Go/NoGo task was not significantly different between CD subjects and controls. The DCM analysis revealed that prefrontal-striatal connectivity was modulated (influenced) during the NoGo conditions for both groups. The effective connectivity from left (L) anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) to L caudate was similarly modulated during the Easy NoGo condition for both groups. During the Hard NoGo condition in controls, the effective connectivity from right (R) dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) to L caudate became more positive, and the effective connectivity from R ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) to L caudate became more negative. In CD subjects, the effective connectivity from L ACC to L caudate became more negative during the Hard NoGo conditions. These results indicate that during Hard NoGo trials in CD subjects, the ACC rather than DLPFC or VLPFC influenced caudate during response inhibition.

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YNIMG Journal 2013 Journal Article

Function in the human connectome: Task-fMRI and individual differences in behavior

Deanna M. Barch
Gregory C. Burgess
Michael P. Harms
Steven E. Petersen
Bradley L. Schlaggar
Maurizio Corbetta
Matthew F. Glasser
Sandra Curtiss

The primary goal of the Human Connectome Project (HCP) is to delineate the typical patterns of structural and functional connectivity in the healthy adult human brain. However, we know that there are important individual differences in such patterns of connectivity, with evidence that this variability is associated with alterations in important cognitive and behavioral variables that affect real world function. The HCP data will be a critical stepping-off point for future studies that will examine how variation in human structural and functional connectivity play a role in adult and pediatric neurological and psychiatric disorders that account for a huge amount of public health resources. Thus, the HCP is collecting behavioral measures of a range of motor, sensory, cognitive and emotional processes that will delineate a core set of functions relevant to understanding the relationship between brain connectivity and human behavior. In addition, the HCP is using task-fMRI (tfMRI) to help delineate the relationships between individual differences in the neurobiological substrates of mental processing and both functional and structural connectivity, as well as to help characterize and validate the connectivity analyses to be conducted on the structural and functional connectivity data. This paper describes the logic and rationale behind the development of the behavioral, individual difference, and tfMRI batteries and provides preliminary data on the patterns of activation associated with each of the fMRI tasks, at both group and individual levels.

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YNIMG Journal 2008 Journal Article

Striatal sensitivity to reward deliveries and omissions in substance dependent patients

James M. Bjork
Ashley R. Smith
Daniel W. Hommer

Some motivational theories of substance dependence (SD) posit either pathologically increased or decreased ventral striatum (VS) recruitment by cues for nondrug rewards. The incentive-sensitization hypothesis, alternatively, attributes SD to enhanced incentive salience of drug-predictive cues specifically, with no requirement for altered nondrug incentive processing. We assessed whether individuals undergoing inpatient therapy for SD are characterized by altered recruitment of mesolimbic incentive neurocircuitry by cues and deliveries of nondrug rewards. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, substance-dependent patients (SDP) and controls performed a modified monetary incentive delay task featuring: a) anticipatory cues that signaled opportunities to respond to a target to either win money or avoid losing money, b) notifications of wins and losses, and c) unexpected replacement of reward trial outcomes with a demand to repeat the trial. Both anticipatory reward cues and loss cues elicited similar mood responses and VS activation between SDP and controls. However, in SDP (but not controls), reward notifications also activated VS and mesial frontal cortex, and loss notifications activated anterior insula. Finally, substitution of expected outcomes in reward trials with notifications to repeat the trial deactivated the VS in SDP but not in controls. These data do not suggest that SD is characterized by altered recruitment of VS circuitry by cues for nondrug incentives. Rather, SDP may instead have increased limbic system sensitivity to reward and loss delivery, consistent with the role of impulsivity in SD.

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