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Overall, our findings suggest that pubertal timing is associated with sex-specific reorganization of large-scale functional brain systems during early adolescence, particularly in females.

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Despite associations between pubertal timing, rsFC, and depression, we found no evidence that rsFC mediated the relationship between pubertal timing and later depressive symptoms.

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We also replicated an important behavioral finding: earlier pubertal timing predicted higher depressive symptoms both concurrently and longitudinally across adolescence.

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Compared to the widespread cross-sectional effects, longitudinal associations in females involved a much smaller subset of network pairs. No stable longitudinal effects were detected in males.

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Longitudinally, earlier pubertal timing in females predicted lower rsFC 2 years later, particularly in basal ganglia, thalamic, sensory-motor, and ventral attention systems. Most effects were negative, suggesting reduced connectivity over time among systems influenced by earlier pubertal maturation.

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At ages 9–11, earlier pubertal timing in females was associated with widespread, heterogeneous rsFC patterns involving basal ganglia, salience/attention, sensory-motor, and frontoparietal systems. In males, effects were weaker and mainly involved sensory-motor, visual, and cerebellar systems.

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Main finding: earlier pubertal timing was associated with widespread, highly heterogeneous patterns of resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC). Importantly, these effects were much stronger and more widespread in females than males.

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Using resting-state fMRI from the ABCD Study, we examined associations between pubertal timing and connectivity across 171 network-pair connections spanning the whole brain. Rather than focusing only on a few preselected circuits, we took a connectome-wide approach.

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Earlier pubertal timing (developing earlier relative to same-age, same-sex peers) has consistently been linked to increased depression risk during adolescence. But how pubertal timing relates to large-scale functional brain network organization has remained unclear.

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Excited to share our new preprint “Functional brain network correlates of pubertal timing and depressive symptoms in preadolescence” doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.22.727009 We examined how pubertal timing relates to whole-brain functional connectivity and depression risk in >9,000 youth (ABCD Study)

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Compared to the widespread cross-sectional effects, longitudinal associations in females involved a much smaller subset of network pairs. No stable longitudinal effects were detected in males.

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Nasia Metoki @nasiametoki.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

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Get ready to get your mind blown! 🧠 ⛓️ Turns out cortex isn’t neatly following cytoarchitectonic borders, but more like a set of functional chains that link and split across regions, creating parallel processing streams. Safe to say this one might re-chain how we think about brain organization 👀

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Nasia Metoki @nasiametoki.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Don’t miss out reading about this amazing work linking the SCAN to Parkinson’s disease. What are the best ways we could use this new knowledge?!

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Reposted by Nasia Metoki

Francesca Cesari @francesari.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Targeting the somato-cognitive action network (SCAN) rather than motor regions doubles efficacy of TMS treatments for Parkinson’s disease. Seems that various DBS targets for Parkinson’s are selectively connected to the SCAN rather than effector-specific motor regions.🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder - Nature

The substantia nigra and all Parkinson’s disease deep-brain stimulation targets are selectively connected to the somato-cognitive action network rather than to effector-specific motor regions.

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Reposted by Nasia Metoki

Mary Elizabeth Sutherland @meharpist.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

The highlight of my week was the publication of "Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder" in @nature.com. It's a great paper that shows how conceptual changes in fundamental neuroscience - the discovery of SCAN - can improve treatment 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Parkinson’s disease as a somato-cognitive action network disorder - Nature

The substantia nigra and all Parkinson’s disease deep-brain stimulation targets are selectively connected to the somato-cognitive action network rather than to effector-specific motor regions.

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Reposted by Nasia Metoki

Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Scientists just discovered a key brain network affected by Parkinson’s disease. The finding could change how doctors understand symptoms and lead to better treatments. 🧠 bit.ly/4qdpLMf

"Parkinson’s is not just a movement problem involving one body part. This study shows it is a whole-body brain network disorder that links movement, thinking, arousal and internal body control." —Michael Okun, neurologist at the University of Florida and medical director of the Parkinson’s Foundation

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Nasia Metoki @nasiametoki.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Do not miss this incredibly important finding about the SCAN and Parkinson’s disease.

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Reposted by Nasia Metoki

WashU Medicine @washumedicine.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

What if we've misunderstood how ADHD stimulants work? WashU Medicine brain imaging and child neurology teams joined forces to uncover where in the brain these drugs act — knowledge that could improve how attention disorders are treated. medicine.washu.edu/news/stimula...

medicine.washu.edu

Stimulant ADHD medications work differently than thought | WashU Medicine

A study from WashU Medicine shows for the first time that commonly prescribed drugs for ADHD do not act on the brain’s attention circuitry.

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Nasia Metoki @nasiametoki.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

Amazing work by @benjaminkay.bsky.social and the @ndosenbach.bsky.social lab on the effect of stimulant medications on the brain! A must-read!

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Reposted by Nasia Metoki

Matt Cieslak @cieslakmatt.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

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:

biorxiv.org

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...

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Reposted by Nasia Metoki

Aris Sotiras @asotiras.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

🎓 Congratulations Dr. Jin Yang! Jin successfully defended his PhD thesis, "The Development of Deep-Learning-Based Automatic Multi-Organ Segmentation Models from CT Images and their Clinical Evaluation", as part of the Imaging Science PhD Program at WashU!

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Overall, there were significantly more aligned males than females in the sample (1,172 vs. 873), and unaligned females showed lower Youth Self-Report Gender Questionnaire scores than unaligned males — both patterns also observed in the full ABCD dataset (Potter et al., 2022, Developmental Cog Neuro)

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Here is the frequency distribution of the (A) Youth Self-Report and (B) Parent-Report Gender Questionnaires from the Supplementary Materials.

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This categorization was used for the SVM sex classification analyses. In contrast, the SVR analyses, which aimed to predict continuous sex/gender alignment scores, did not involve any categorization.

Just to clarify — I prefer “unaligned” since it simply describes a lack of alignment, without implying that something went wrong. In my study, 46% of girls scored below the highest possible score on the Youth Self-Report Gender Questionnaire, placing them in the unaligned category.

I am grateful to everyone who contributed to this effort, for their hard work and the thoughtful discussions we shared throughout the process. @roselynechauvin.bsky.social @gordonneuro.bsky.social @benjaminkay.bsky.social Babatunde Adeyemo Aristeidis Sotiras @ndosenbach.bsky.social