Le plissement cortical : un marqueur du neurodéveloppement
Cortical folding
begins during the last trimester of pregnancy and remains relatively stable throughout life from birth (at term). This process leads to the formation of the brain's sulci and gyri, which are
unique to each individual and whose structure reflects fundamental neurodevelopmental mechanisms. Growing evidence suggests that
psychiatric disorders—such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism spectrum disorders—arise from complex interactions between early disruptions in brain development and later environmental influences. Thus,
patterns of cortical folding could serve as stable biomarkers, revealing the neurodevelopmental component of these conditions.
Researchers from the
GAIA laboratory (BAOBAB unit /NeuroSpin) conducted a study in collaboration with the Psychiatry team at
UNIACT (NeuroSpin/Henri Mondor Hospital, AP-HP) to explore the
use of deep learning in extracting meaningful representations of cortical folding patterns from structural MRI images. The goal is
to demonstrate that these representations enable individual prediction of major psychiatric disorders, paving the way for a better understanding of the neurodevelopmental origins of these diseases.
The researchers developed and compared three distinct approaches:
- A global model trained from scratch, i.e., a neural network trained directly on clinical cohorts, serving as a reference framework;
- A foundation model, using a neural network pre-trained on a large general population database (UK Biobank) to capture robust anatomical features, which are then transferred for clinical applications;
- A regional approach: a set of specialized models (generated by the "Champollion" algorithm developed by the GAIA laboratory) that analyzes specific brain regions, offering better interpretability. Regional predictions are then combined for a global prediction.
The study's findings, published in the Journal of Neural Transmission, show that pre-training on large cohorts like the UK Biobank significantly improves predictive performance for psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and autism spectrum disorder. The regional approach identifies key brain areas, such as the superior temporal sulcus, already known to be involved in autism spectrum disorders.
Contact at Frédéric-Joliot Institute for Life sciences:
This text was translated
with the assistance of Mistral AI.