Hosted by Solange Denervaud, CIBM Flagship Project Officer, we are pleased to invite you to attend the CIBM Visitors Talk on April 24th at 13:00 CEST by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang from the University of Southern California who will be sharing on “Longitudinal neurodevelopmental correlates of mid-adolescents’ psychosocial processing: A path to young adult wellbeing?”.
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\r\nAbstract
\r\nCombining open-ended interviews (outside the scanner) with structural, trial-by-trial, and resting-state functional MRI neuroimaging, we examined real-time functional neural dynamics underlying diverse urban mid-adolescents’ cognitive and emotional engagement with compelling social stories at two time-points, two years apart. We found that the patterns of longitudinal change in neural network dynamics predicted psychosocial outcomes five years later in young adulthood.
\r\nWe found that “transcendent thinking” – seeing situations not just in terms of X happened to person A, which makes me feel thusly, but in terms of the larger societal and contextual forces that shaped how Person A was treated and how Person A reacted, the broader implications and lessons one can draw from that situation, and the larger issues it exemplifies or reveals—correlated with a particular set of neural activity dynamics and predicted future structural and functional neural development across the subsequent two years, controlling for the starting state of neural development, and independent of IQ and SES. Transcendent thinking also countered negative effects of exposure to community violence on structural brain development.
\r\nThe neural development predicted by transcendent thinking (the changes in the brain across the 2-year period) in turn predicted young adult identity strength, self-liking, relationship satisfaction, and achievement 5 years later.
\r\nThese findings reveal a novel predictor of neural development across mid-adolescence, and underscore the active role adolescents play in their own brain development through the meaning they make of the social world. Implications for secondary education and pedagogy will be discussed.
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TBA
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The notion of semi-abelian category, introduced by G. Janelidze, L. Márki and W. Tholen in 2002, generalizes that of abelian category, and captures the homological properties that the categories of groups, associative algebras, Lie algebras and cocommutative Hopf algebras over a field have in common. Internal structures behave surprisingly well in semi-abelian categories. For example, any internal reflexive graph admits at most one internal category structure, and the categories of internal categories and internal groupoids are isomorphic. Moreover, the category of internal groupoids is equivalent to the category of internal crossed modules. The notion of internal crossed module in any semi-abelian category was introduced by G. Janelidze in 2003, and recovers in particular the classical notion of crossed module of groups. The fact that the category of internal groupoids in a semi-abelian category is itself semi-abelian implies that also the category of internal n-fold groupoids is well-behaved.
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\r\nIn this talk, I will prove that the full subcategory of internal n-groupoids in a semi-abelian category is a Birkhoff subcategory of the category of internal n-fold groupoids, and provide a simple description of the corresponding reflection for n=2. In the abelian context, the internal n-groupoids yield a torsion-free subcategory of the category of internal n-fold groupoids, and it is possible to characterize (higher) central extensions and compute generalized Hopf formulae for homology.
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\r\nPart of this talk is based on joint work with Marino Gran
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The classification of gait patterns is an important challenge in movement analysis, as it supports clinical assessment and decision-making by enabling diagnosis and severity stratification. In this talk, I will discuss the potential of Topological Data Analysis (TDA) for gait pattern classification. Unlike conventional approaches that rely on explicit detection of Gait Events (GEs) to compute Spatiotemporal Gait Parameters (SGPs), TDA characterises the global structure of gait signals directly, capturing relationships and patterns in the data without requiring GEs. This is particularly relevant in real-world settings, where GE detection can be diQicult due to heterogeneity in walking conditions and gait patterns, potentially biasing clinically relevant metrics and, consequently, decision-making.
\r\nWithin our department, preliminary results have shown that TDA-based features can achieve classification performance comparable to that of SGPs in fall-risk assessment. These findings suggest that topology oQers a competitive alternative for representing gait data, with the potential to better handle variability across subjects and pathological
\r\nconditions.
\r\nBuilding on these results, we plan to further extend the TDA framework in two directions. First, we aim to investigate time-aware topological methods to better capture the
\r\ntemporal structure of gait signals. Second, we will explore Topological Deep Learning (TDL) approaches to reduce reliance on handcrafted design choices and potentially
\r\nimprove classification performance. By combining the robustness of topology with datadriven representation learning, this work seeks to provide robust tools for the classification of typical and pathological gait patterns.
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Access to genetic information within the cell nucleus is regulated by the distribution of nucleosomes, which are the basic unit of chromatin. Local access to specific genomic regions is facilitated by repositioning nucleosomes to enable transcription and other nuclear processes. Nucleosome positioning is primarily regulated by ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling enzymes (CRs) that belong to the Snf2-type helicase family. These enzymes disrupt histone-DNA contacts by consuming ATP. The functions of CRs can be redundant or essential, complicating their study in vivo. To address this, we employ a unique bottom-up approach, in which we reconstitute chromatin in vitro using purified proteins and a yeast genomic plasmid library. To elucidate the diverse remodeling functions of CRs, we add purified CRs in combination with various transcription factors to the in vitro reconstituted chromatin. The resulting changes in nucleosome positioning are monitored using MNase-seq. Depending on the type of CR used, we observe distinct nucleosome positioning patterns. Furthermore, we have expanded our in vitro reconstitution approach to explore the 3D genome organization of reconstituted chromatin, discovering a role for CRs in the 3D genome organization of S. cerevisiae.
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\r\n1. O. Harel, M. Jbara, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2023, 62, e202217716
\r\n2. R. Nithun, Y. Yao, X. Lin, S. Habiballah, A. Afek, M. Jbara, Angew. Chem. In. Ed., 2023, 62, e202310913
\r\n3. R. Nithun, Y. Yao, O. Harel, S. Habiballah, A. Afek, M. Jbara, ACS Central Science, 2024, 10, 1295–1303
\r\n4. X. Lin, S. Mandal, R. Nithun, R. Kolla, B. Bouri, H. Lashuel, M. Jbara, JACS, 2024, 146, 25788
\r\n5. X. Lin, O. Harel, M. Jbara, Angew. Chem. In. Ed., 2024, 63, e202317511
\r\n6. O. Harel, F. Nadal-Bufi, R. Nithun, Y. Yao, A. Afek, M. Vendrell, M. Jbara, JACS, 2025, 147, 46, 42647
The SPOT closes its doors for the Balelec festival
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