Multiscale Neurodevelopment | Dr. Casey Paquola
About
The Multiscale Neurodevelopment team studies the maturation of cortical architecture, connectivity and functional dynamics across early life. By combining multi-modal neuroimaging with computational modelling, we aim to better understand cognitive maturation and psychiatric illness.
Funded by: Emmy Noether Programm
Research Topics
- Development of the human brain from infancy to adolescence
- Origins and emergence of psychiatric disorders in early life
- Neural building blocks of cognitive maturation
Understanding cognitive maturation and psychiatric risk via multi-scale neuroscience
Contemporary neuroscience has excelled at describing where certain psychological capabilities are produced in the brain, but we lack understanding of how these regions contribute to cognition. We contend that we can close this mechanistic gap by combining information from multiple biological scales.1 Leveraging multi-modal MRI, as well as post mortem histology, our team studies how the microstructure, connectivity and function of brain networks interact to enable the most complex aspects of human cognition, such as the formation of abstract concepts.2
By characterising the neural mechanisms of cognition, we aim to better understand how changes in the brain lead to psychiatric disorders. Our team, supported by the Emmy Noether Programme, is currently working on investigating these links in children and adolescence.
We centre our research on youth because, firstly, the vast majority of psychiatric illnesses emerge in youth, and secondly, from a scientific perspective, neurodevelopment offers us a unique opportunity to unravel the temporal relationships between neuroanatomy and cognitive capabilities, as both the brain and cognition change dramatically throughout early life.
Cortical development at the micro-scale

Cortical architecture (i.e. the organisation of neurons and glia) determines how a region processes and distributes information. Thus, the microstructure of a cortical area provides important insight into its functional potential. Recent innovations in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have paved the way for measuring cortical microstructure in living humans.3 Building upon these advances, our team studies how intracortical microstructure changes across the lifespan.4 In doing so, we’re gaining a deeper understanding of brain maturation – a complex, multi-factorial process – and we’re learning about the structural basis of neurodiversity.
Hierarchies of brain organisation: grasping the complexity of human cognition
The mammalian brain is often conceptualised as a hierarchy, whereby information is increasingly integrated as it flows from sensory areas towards higher-order association cortex and memories centres. Our team has pioneered new approaches to map this “sensory-fugal” axis using MRI,5 thereby allowing us to investigate how this organisation differs across individuals and how it matures during youth.6
We’re also working on expanding our understanding of cortical hierarchies to more comprehensively grasp the complexity of the human brain. For instance, we recently discovered that the organisation of the default mode network, which is associated with self-referential thought and is greatly expanded in humans relative to other animals, exhibits a distinctive hierarchical structure, different to the standard flow of information from sensory areas to memory centres.7 These new neuroanatomical insights are helping us to understand how human cognition is enriched by capabilities such as autobiographical memory and language.
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