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Gareth Ball

@garedaba.bsky.social
232 followers 309 following 31 posts

Neurodevelopmental Modelling @ MCRI in Melbourne. Early brain development, neuroscience, ML.

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Reposted by Gareth Ball
Scott Marek @smarek0502.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
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/...
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Steven Meisler @stevenmeisler.com · 19/04/2026
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...
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
Thalamocortical constraints on areal connectivity in the developing human brain www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Will Snyder @willsnyder.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
How may rare vs. common genetic variation separately influence how our brains – and their complex folding patterns – take shape? 🧬 🧠 Check out our new preprint (and final work from my PhD!) out now! ( + thread below) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
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Rick Betzel @richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
🚨 New paper from @apodschun.bsky.social (with Sebastian Markett, Urs Braun, and myself) Exploring the Role of the Rich Club in Network Control of Neurocognitive States onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Exploring the Role of the Rich Club in Network Control of Neurocognitive States
Using a network control theoretical framework, we found that the brain's rich club does not optimally control dynamics of the brain. Instead, size-matched sets of random peripheral regions had a sign...
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Zoltan Molnar @zoltan-molnar.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Brain Growth Patterns Predict 2-Year Neurodevelopment bioengineer.org/brain-growth... Growth of fetal brain with long-term neurodevelopmental validation provides insights into in utero brain maturation and their predictive relationship with postnatal neurological function. doi.org/10.1038/s414...
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
The Extremely Brilliant Brain: An Isotropic Microscale Human Brain Dataset www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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Alex Pollen @brainevodevo.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
1/ Our new study, led by Jingwen Ding, examines the role of transcription factors during human neurogenesis to identify gene regulatory networks influencing cell fate, maturation, and subtype specification www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Dissecting gene regulatory networks governing human cortical cell fate - Nature
Systematic screening of transcription factors reveals conserved mechanisms governing cortical radial glia lineage progression across primates and provides a framework for functional dissecti...
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Steve Smith @fmrib-steve.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Preprint on PANDORA by Aslan Abivardi: A massive archive of UK Biobank brain imaging from 82K subjects. For each of 98 sub-modalities (e.g., FA from dMRI), the images are collated into a convenient subjectsXvoxels HDF5 file. pages.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/pandora/web/ www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Oliver Harschnitz @harschnitz.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Incredible resource of ~1M single-cell transcriptomes, NeuRoDev, that captures temporal and cellular variation across human brain development. Congrats to Asia Zonca and Erik Bot from the Davila-Velderrain group at @humantechnopole.bsky.social for leading this work! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Rick Betzel @richardfbetzel.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
🧠🪰 The adult Drosophila brain connectome now gives us a complete wiring diagram of ~140k neurons. But a wiring diagram alone isn’t understanding. How is this massive network organized? Our paper tackles that question by mapping community structure across the entire fly brain. 1/
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Moritz Helmstaedter @mhlab.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Connectomics is Method of the Year 2025!! @natmethods.nature.com just released the news nature.com/articles/s41... In my perspective piece, I afford some predictions into the future and compare how we are doing vs. genomics www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
A spatial transcriptomic atlas of autism-associated genes identifies convergence in the developing human thalamus www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Alessandro Gozzi @gozziale.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
🚨 Excited to share the latest preprint form the lab ➡️https://tinyurl.com/32d3be9f Here we tackle a long-standing chicken-or-egg 🐣🥚question in #autism and developmental neuroscience ➡️ Is excitation–inhibition (E:I) imbalance a "cause" or a "consequence" of #autism? Check out what we found! 🧵1/n
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 09/09/2025
Multimodal imaging of human fetal brain development at the mesoscopic scale using 11.7 T ex vivo MRI www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Alex Fornito @alexfornito.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
🔥ATTENTION!🔥 Registration for the 2026 Noosa Brain Workshop is now open! Join us for some amazing science, sun, and surf in one of Australia's most beautiful beach towns. Details: tinyurl.com/arbc5pp6 Check out or incredible list of confirmed speakers. More to come...
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Expanding canonical cortical cell type markers in the era of single-cell transcriptomics www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Debby Silver @debbysilver.bsky.social · 10/08/2025
Sharing our newest study led by the incredibly talented @federicamosti.bsky.social investigating new molecular mechanisms of human brain development. We discover a human-specific enhancer HAR1984 that influences chromatin looping to promote cortical size and folding! www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/...
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Kevin Mitchell @wiringthebrain.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
Spatial transcriptomics reveals human cortical layer and area specification www.nature.com/articles/s41... - early emergence of layers; graded differentiation along A/P axis, w/ early, sharp V1/V2 boundary
nature.com
Spatial transcriptomics reveals human cortical layer and area specification - Nature
Multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization (MERFISH) together with deep-learning-based nucleus segmentation enabled the construction of a highly detailed and informative spatially res...
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Gareth Ball @garedaba.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
JOB ALERT! We're seeking a postdoctoral scientist to join Developmental Imaging at @mcri.bsky.social in Melbourne. Role will involve working with international partners on a new project charting brain growth in children with NF-1 Please reach out for more information www.seek.com.au/job/86090834
seek.com.au
Research Officer Job in Parkville, Melbourne VIC - SEEK
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Officer to drive international neuroimaging research into childhood NF1 brain development.
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Gareth Ball @garedaba.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
JOB ALERT! We're seeking a postdoctoral scientist to join Developmental Imaging at @mcri.bsky.social in Melbourne. Role will involve working with international partners on a new project charting brain growth in children with NF-1 Please reach out for more information www.seek.com.au/job/86090834
seek.com.au
Research Officer Job in Parkville, Melbourne VIC - SEEK
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Officer to drive international neuroimaging research into childhood NF1 brain development.
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Gareth Ball @garedaba.bsky.social · 26/07/2025
Big fan of acronyms
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Thomas Yeo @bttyeo.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
1/11 Excited to share our @Naturestudy led by @leonooi.bsky.social @csabaorban.bsky.social @shaoshiz.bsky.social AI performance is known to scale with logarithm of sample size (Kaplan 2020), but in many domains, sample size can be # participants or # measurements... doi.org/10.1038/s415...
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Nature Neuroscience @natneuro.nature.com · 07/07/2025
Human thalamocortical connectivity matures along the cortex’s sensorimotor–association axis www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Human thalamocortical structural connectivity develops in line with a hierarchical axis of cortical plasticity - Nature Neuroscience
Sydnor et al. developed a new tractography atlas of thalamocortical structural connections and applied it to three youth samples. They uncovered coordinated development between thalamic connectivity a...
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Bertoglio lab (FMC/UFSC) @bertogliolab.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
A mouse brain stereotaxic topographic atlas with isotropic 1-μm resolution www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
A mouse brain stereotaxic topographic atlas with isotropic 1-μm resolution - Nature
A stereotaxic atlas of the whole mouse brain, based on a Nissl-stained cytoarchitecture dataset with isotropic 1-μm resolution, achieved through continuous micro-optical sectioning tomography, promise...
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Jeremiah Tsyporin @tsyporin.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Thrilled to present MIND! A model for how the sensorimotor–association axis of the neocortex develops. Huge thanks to the incredible multidisciplinary team who made this happen. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Competing Programs Shape Cortical Sensorimotor-Association Axis Development
The neocortex is organized along a dominant sensorimotor-to-association (S-A) axis, anchored by modality-specific primary sensorimotor areas at one end and transmodal association areas that form distr...
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Zhiqiang Sha (X: @sha_zhiqiang) @zhiqiangsha.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Addressing artifactual bias in large, automated MRI analyses of brain development | Nature Neuroscience www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Addressing artifactual bias in large, automated MRI analyses of brain development - Nature Neuroscience
As large-scale neurodevelopmental MRI studies gain prominence, the authors identify tradeoffs between sample size and quality control that can dramatically affect results, and they evaluate a range of...
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Stuart Oldham @stuartoldham.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
On Friday/Saturday I have a poster (1205) on our work using generative network models, where I explore how heterochronous spatial gradients constrain brain connectivty 🧠⌛🏳️‍🌈 Also Saturday (11:30am; Great Hall) I have a talk on this work, so make sure you have recovered from club night in time for it!
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Stuart Oldham @stuartoldham.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
For those at OHBM, check out my posters and talk! Today and tomorrow I (and maybe @garedaba.bsky.social) will be presenting my poster (1012) on our work linking fetal gene expression to neonatal connectome organisation 🧬🧠👶🌐 1/2 #OHBM #OHBM2025 (preprint here www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... )
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Accurate spatial localization of Allen Human Brain Atlas gene expression data for human neuroimaging www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
Macroscale Connectivity in the Octopus brain www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Stuart Oldham @stuartoldham.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Do you like brain network hubs?🧠🌐✳️Do you like genes?🧬What about neurodevelopment?👶What if I told you the latest work by @garedaba.bsky.social and myself combined all of these?🤯🤯🤯 See Gareth's thread for a primer of our findings, then read the paper for the details! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Transcriptomic divergence of network hubs in the prenatal human brain
Connections in the human brain are not uniformly distributed; instead, a dense network of long-range projections converge on highly connected hub regions located in transmodal, paralimbic, and associa...
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Gareth Ball @garedaba.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
New preprint with @stuartoldham.bsky.social
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Antje Hellwich @antjehellwich.bsky.social · 22/05/2025
DL-SAMER: A new deep learning + retrospective motion correction method for fast, motion-robust 3D brain #MRI — effective even in challenging pediatric cases. Check it out 👉 marketing.webassets.siemens-healthineers.com/7a1c195a6a39... #NeuroSky #RadSky #MagnetomWorld @harvardmed.bsky.social
Integrating SAMER Retrospective Motion Correction into 3D Deep Learning Image Reconstruction for High-Quality, Fast, and Robust Brain MRI by Daniel Polak (Siemens Healthineers, Erlangen, Germany), et al. 

Patient motion is one of the most common sources of image degradation in clinical neuroimaging, manifesting as blurring, ringing, or in severe cases ghosting/folding artifacts. Radiologists are often forced to either interpret images despite these artifacts – risking missed or misinterpreted pathologies – or to request costly and time-consuming repeat scans. 
In pediatric patients, motion is typically more severe, often necessitating anesthesia, which increases both procedural risks and costs. 

Motion artifacts also reduce the reliability of automated quantitative clinical tools, such as those used for brain morphometry and the identification or segmentation of hemorrhages, edema, and tumors. Such tools are increasingly important in the screening, monitoring, and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Scout Accelerated Motion Estimation and Reduction (SAMER) is a retrospective motion correction technique for brain imaging that enables fast motion estimation and artifact correction without the need for external tracking hardware. Clinically evaluated in both adult and pediatric patient populations, SAMER has significantly reduced the number of non-diagnostic motion cases. 

More recently, SAMER has been integrated into a deep learning-based image reconstruction framework to support highly accelerated, motion-robust 3D brain imaging. 
In this article, the authors review the combined DL-SAMER technique and demonstrate its effectiveness in vivo using MPRAGE and SPACE acquisitions at R = 6 acceleration.

Shout out to the co-authors: 
Dominik Nickel, Daniel Nicolas Splitthoff, Bryan Clifford, Yan Tu Huang, Wei-Ching Lo, Shohei Fujita, Susie Y. Huang, John Conklin, Lawrence L. Wald, Stephen Cauley
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Differential patterns of cortical expansion in fetal and preterm brain development www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Aitor Morales-Gregorio @aitormg.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
New preprint alert 📣📣📣 New results showing how strong the link between brain dynamics and structure is 💫👀🧪 "Spontaneous spiking statistics form unique area-specific fingerprints and reflect the hierarchy of cerebral cortex" 🐾🧠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
biorxiv.org
Spontaneous spiking statistics form unique area-specific fingerprints and reflect the hierarchy of cerebral cortex
The cerebral cortex, from sensory to higher cognitive areas, is hierarchically organised Several dynamical and anatomical measures, such as timescales and neurotransmitter receptor expression, have in...
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Xuyu Qian @qianxuyu.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
Today in @nature.com , we report a spatial single-cell atlas of human cortical development, revealing surprisingly early specification of human cortical layers and areas. We built an interactive browser to explore the spatial data: walshlab.org/research/cor... Paper link below 👇
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 13/05/2025
22q11 deletion selectively alters progenitor states and projection neuron identities in the developing cerebral cortex www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Imaging Neuroscience @imagingneurosci.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Weide Liu, Davood Karimi, et al: Streamline tractography of the fetal brain in utero with machine learning doi.org/10.1162/imag...
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James Pang @jchrispang.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
We are hiring! @aurinaarn.bsky.social and I are jointly looking for a talented Postdoc in Systems and Comp Neuro at Monash (AUS). If you like neuroimaging 🧠, comp models 💻, genetics 🧬, brain disorders 🤕, and/or evolution 🐵🐭, this could be the job for you!! careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/jo...
careers.pageuppeople.com
Job Search
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Lianglong Sun @longonga.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Happy to share that our article “Human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome” is now published online at Nature Neuroscience @natureneuro.bsky.social ! Many thanks to all collaborators & data contributors, and the editor team & reviewers! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome - Nature Neuroscience
Sun et al. report human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome in 33,250 individuals, which highlights critical growth milestones and distinct maturation patterns and offers a normative...
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Imaging Neuroscience @imagingneurosci.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Vyacheslav R. Karolis, Joseph V. Hajnal, et al: The developing Human Connectome Project fetal functional MRI release: Methods and data structures doi.org/10.1162/imag...
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Yourong Guo @yrguo.bsky.social · 09/03/2025
I'm very excited to share my PhD work "Motifs of brain cortical folding from birth to adulthood: structural asymmetry and folding-functional links". We identified and characterised the lobe-wise folding patterns using both 1110 young adults (HCP) and 781 term-age neonates (dHCP & BIBS studies). 1/9
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Ex vivo human brain volumetry: validation of magnetic resonance imaging measurements www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
Reproducible Brain Charts: An open data resource for mapping brain development and its associations with mental health www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Antje Hellwich @antjehellwich.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Scanning Faster: Application in #Pediatric Neuroimaging by Michael Kean, Chief #MRI Technologist at The Royal Children’s Hospital/@mcri.bsky.social, Melbourne, Australia. Read the full article: marketing.webassets.siemens-healthineers.com/5cfbee50efc2... #MagnetomWorld #NeuroSky #ChildhoodCancerDay
On today’s International Childhood Cancer Day let me highlight Michael Kean’s comprehensive look at Scanning Faster: Application in Pediatric Neuroimaging. 
The need for faster MR scanning is driven by muliple factors in both clinical and research settings. These factors include patient compliance, increasing pressure on the MR facility to scan more patients in a shorter time amid rising healthcare costs and long waiting lists, the integration of newer sequences into the protocol, and minimizing sedation or anesthesia times.

Faster scanning techniques can be successfully integrated into routine pediatric protocols significantly reducing scan times. While no single solution fits all clinical protocols, the tools are available to customize your sequences to match the requirements of your department. 

The figure shows how to put it all together into a clinical neuro-oncology protocol. Recurrent supra tentorial Ewings Sarcoma. 
29A: T2 TSE DL p3, 0.2 × 0.2 × 2.5 mm3, 2:20 min 
29B: T2 FS FLAIR DL, 1:43 min 
29C: SMS RESOLVE p2s2 DWI, b-value 1000 s/mm2 
29D: CS FS T1 SPACE BB, 0.8 mm isotropic, 4:12 min
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Andrew Zalesky @andrewzalesky.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
So much research focusses on using brain connectivity to predict an individual's cognition, IQ, disease status, etc. BUT what about the inverse problem? Can personal data be used to build an individual's whole connectome? YES - with AI: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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medRxivpreprint @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Towards automated fetal brain biometry reporting for 3-dimensional T2-weighted 0.55-3T magnetic resonance imaging at 20-40 weeks gestational age range www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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Valerie Jill Sydnor @valeriejsydnor.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Cortical maturation unfolds hierarchically, endowing the PFC with extended plasticity. But do timeframes of plasticity vary across PFC layers? With 7T quantitative myelin imaging, EEG, and cognitive data, we uncover heterochronous laminar maturation in the PFC 1/n. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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bioRxiv Neuroscience @biorxiv-neursci.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
Early cell cycle genes in cortical organoid progenitors predict interindividual variability in infant brain growth trajectories www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…
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