Bogdan Draganski

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Verified

Bogdan verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• MD
• Head Memory Clinic Neurozentrum at Inselspital, Universitätsspital Bern

Detailed knowledge of the anatomy and connectivity pattern of cortico-basal ganglia circuits is essential to an understanding of abnormal cortical function and pathophysiology associated with a wide range of neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases. We aim to study the spatial extent and topography of human basal ganglia connectivity in vivo. Add...

Significance Electroconvulsive therapy is controversial: How does a major electrical discharge over half the brain result in recovery in disorders such as refractory major depression and manic depression, which are apparently different diseases? We find local but not general brain anatomy changes following electroconvulsive therapy that are differe...

Does the structure of an adult human brain alter in response to environmental demands? Here we use whole-brain magnetic-resonance imaging to visualize learning-induced plasticity in the brains of volunteers who have learned to juggle. We find that these individuals show a transient and selective structural change in brain areas that are associated...

Background After more than eight decades of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) for pharmaco-resistant depression, the mechanisms governing its anti-depressant effects remain poorly understood. Computational anatomy studies using longitudinal T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data have demonstrated ECT effects on hippocampus volume and corti...

Despite decades of successful treatment of therapy-resistant depression and major scientific advances in the field, our knowledge about electro-convulsive therapy’s (ECT) mechanisms of action is still scarce. Building on strong empirical evidence for ECT-induced hippocampus anatomy changes, we sought to test the hypothesis that ECT has a differenti...

Target identification for tractography studies requires solid anatomical knowledge validated by an extensive literature review across species for each seed structure to be studied. Manual literature review to identify targets for a given seed region is tedious and potentially subjective. Therefore, complementary approaches would be useful. We propo...

Self-contempt and emotional arousal are two key concepts associated with psychological distress but have been little studied in a daily life context. This work explores the use of individualized self-contemptuous stimuli extracted from a self-critical two-chair dialogue into an fMRI scanner. 28 female controls participated in psychological investig...

Given the high prevalence of aging-associated cerebral small vessel disease in the general population, accurate detection of the related white matter hyperintensities (WMH) in large-scale magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies is of critical importance. The performance of currently available semi-automated and automated methods for WMH classifica...

A spinal cord injury (SCI) disrupts the neuronal projections from the brain to the region of the spinal cord that produces walking, leading to various degrees of paralysis. Here, we aimed to identify brain regions that steer the recovery of walking after incomplete SCI and that could be targeted to augment this recovery. To uncover these regions, w...

In face of cumulating evidence about the impact of human-induced environmental changes on mental health and behavior, our understanding of the main effects and interactions between environmental factors – i.e., the exposome and the brain – is still limited. We seek to fill this knowledge gap by leveraging georeferenced largescale brain imaging and...

Given the association of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) with subjective perception of fatigue and demyelination in clinical conditions, the question about potential subclinical effects in the adult general population remains open. We investigate the association between individuals’ EBV immune response and perceived fatigue in a community dwelling cohort...

The effects of menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) on neurological and psychiatric disease risk have shown conflicting results across epidemiological and clinical studies. Given the widespread propagation of MHT among females experiencing menopausal symptoms, clarifying causality and impact is critical for informed decision-making. Although randomised...

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are advanced computational systems for acquiring, storing, analyzing, and visualizing spatial data, enabling comprehensive exploration of geographical relationships and patterns across diverse domains. GIS play a crucial role in analyzing the intersection of mood and brain data in a geo-environmental context. Th...

For almost five decades of its existence, imaging neuroscience—the research branch that uses noninvasive brain imaging to provide inferences about brain structure and function, has focused almost exclusively on studies pertaining to well-controlled laboratory experiments or brain pathologies. There is a recent focus on the interaction between indiv...

Background Tight diabetes control is often applied in older persons with neurocognitive disorder resulting in increased hypoglycemic episodes but little is known about the pattern of brain injury in these overtreated patients. This study aims to: (a) quantify the prevalence of diabetes overtreatment in cognitively impaired older adults in a clinica...

The amygdala nuclei modulate distributed neural circuits that most likely evolved to respond to environmental threats and opportunities. So far, the specific role of unique amygdala nuclei in the context processing of salient environmental cues lacks adequate characterization across neural systems and over time. Here, we present amygdala nuclei mor...

Asymmetry between the left and right hemisphere is a key feature of brain organization. Hemispheric functional specialization underlies some of the most advanced human-defining cognitive operations, such as articulated language, perspective taking, or rapid detection of facial cues. Yet, genetic investigations into brain asymmetry have mostly relie...

Given the unpredictable rapid onset and ubiquitous consequences of weight gain induced by antipsychotics, there is a pressing need to get insights into the underlying processes at the brain system level that will allow stratification of “at risk” patients. The pathophysiological hypothesis at hand is focused on brain networks governing impulsivity...

Despite major advances, our understanding of the neurobiology of life course socioeconomic conditions is still scarce. This study aimed to provide insight into the pathways linking socioeconomic exposures-household income, last known occupational position, and life course socioeconomic trajectories-with brain microstructure and cognitive performanc...

It is tempting to map interindividual variability in human perception to variability in brain structure or neural activity. Indeed, it has been shown that susceptibility to size illusions correlates with the size of primary visual cortex V1. Yet contrary to common belief, illusions correlate only weakly at the perceptual level, raising the question...

Introduction The menopause transition is associated with several cardiometabolic risk factors. Poor cardiometabolic health is further linked to microvascular brain lesions, which can be detected as white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) using T2-FLAIR magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Females show higher risk for WMHs post-menopause, but it rem...

The brain and its health are essential for our (physical mental, social, and spiritual) wellbeing, for being able to realize our potential as individuals, and also for a fair, well-functioning, and productive society. However, today the world is facing a healthcare crisis related to the very high (and increasing) burden of brain disorders. As a res...

The menopause transition is associated with several cardiometabolic risk factors. Poor cardiometabolic health is further linked to microvascular brain lesions, which can be detected as white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) using T2-FLAIR magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Females show higher risk for WMHs post-menopause, but it remains unclear...

Background: Consistent noise variance across data points (i.e. homoscedasticity) is required to ensure the validity of statistical analyses of MRI data conducted using linear regression methods. However, head motion leads to degradation of image quality, introducing noise heteroscedasticity into ordinary-least square analyses. New method: The re...

Across the lifespan, the human body and brain endure the impact of a plethora of exogenous and endogenous factors that determine the health outcome in old age. The overwhelming inter-individual variance spans between progressive frailty with loss of autonomy to largely preserved physical, cognitive, and social functions. Understanding the mechanism...

Objective: The current evidence of a relationship between periodic leg movements during sleep (PLMS) and cognitive functioning is limited and inconsistent. This cross-sectional study assessed associations between PLMS and cognitive functioning among community-dwelling older adults. Methods: We included community-dwelling older adults who underwent...

Objective: Copy number variants (CNVs) are well-known genetic pleiotropic risk factors for multiple neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders (NPDs), including autism (ASD) and schizophrenia. Little is known about how different CNVs conferring risk for the same condition may affect subcortical brain structures and how these alterations relate t...

Research on the relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and cognitive functioning has yielded conflicting results, particularly in the older population, and moderators of this association have rarely been studied. Here we investigated the cross-sectional association between obstructive sleep apnea and cognitive functioning as well as the moder...

This study set out to examine the role of different adversities experienced at different life course stages on cognitive aging (i.e., level and change). Data from the longitudinal study: Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) with the selection of participants over 60 years were used (N = 2662, Mdnage = 68, SDage = 5.39) in a St...

In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive historical overview of algorithms for feature extraction of structural magnetic resonance imaging data and the corresponding analytical frameworks. We then focus on the use of T1-weighted images, which still represent the working horse of surface- and voxel-based morphometry to elaborate on the complex re...

There is an ongoing debate about differential clinical outcome and associated adverse effects of deep brain stimulation (DBS) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) targeting the subthalamic nucleus (STN) or the globus pallidus pars interna (GPi). Given that functional connectivity profiles suggest beneficial DBS effects within a common network, the empirical...

Asymmetry between the left and right brain is a key feature of brain organization. Hemispheric functional specialization underlies some of the most advanced human-defining cognitive operations, such as articulated language, perspective taking, or rapid detection of facial cues. Yet, genetic investigations into brain asymmetry have mostly relied on...

Given the unpredictable rapid onset and ubiquitous consequences of weight gain induced by antipsychotics (AP), there is a pressing need to get insights into the underlying processes at the brain system level that will allow stratification of “at risk” patients. The pathophysiological hypothesis at hand is focused on brain networks governing impulsi...

Our knowledge of the mechanisms underlying the vulnerability of the brain’s white matter microstructure to cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs) is still limited. We used a quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol in a single centre setting to investigate the cross-sectional association between CVRFs and brain tissue properties of white...

Consistent noise variance across data points (i.e. homoscedasticity) is required to ensure the validity of statistical analyses of MRI data conducted using linear regression methods. However, head motion leads to degradation of image quality, introducing noise heteroscedasticity into ordinary-least square analyses. The recently introduced QUIQI met...

Across the lifespan, the human body and brain endure the impact of a plethora of exogenous and endogenous factors that modulate individuals' health outcome in old age. The overwhelming inter-individual variance spans between increased frailties with loss of autonomy to largely preserved physical, cognitive, and social functions. Understanding the m...

Recurrent copy number variations (CNVs) are rare genomic deletions and duplications that can exert profoundly effects on brain and behavior. Previous reports of pleiotropy in CNVs imply that they converge on shared mechanisms at some level of pathway cascades, from genes to large-scale neural circuits to the phenome. However, studies to date have p...

There is much controversy about the link between motor symptom progression and the plethora of reported brain atrophy patterns in idiopathic Parkinson’s disease (PD). The main goal of this study is to provide empirical evidence for unique and common contributions of clinical phenotype characteristics on the dynamic changes of brain structure over t...

Objectives Copy number variants (CNVs) are well-known genetic pleiotropic risk factors for multiple neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders (NPDs) including autism (ASD) and schizophrenia (SZ). Overall, little is known about how different CNVs conferring risk for the same condition may affect subcortical brain structures and how these alterati...

Even though obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the ten most disabling diseases according to the WHO, only 30–40% of patients suffering from OCD seek specialized treatment. The currently available psychotherapeutic and pharmacological approaches, when properly applied, prove ineffective in about 10% of cases. The use of neuromodulation te...

Background: The relationship between obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) and cognitive decline remains controversial, especially in the elderly population. We used data from the HypnoLaus study to assess associations between OSA and longitudinal cognitive changes in a sample of community-dwelling elderly individuals. Methods: We studied associations be...

The menopause transition involves changes in oestrogens and adipose tissue distribution, which may influence female brain health post-menopause. Although increased central fat accumulation is linked to risk of cardiometabolic diseases, adipose tissue also serves as the primary biosynthesis site of oestrogens post-menopause. It is unclear whether di...

At the present time, no viable treatment exists for cognitive and olfactory deficits in Down syndrome (DS). We show in a DS model (Ts65Dn mice) that these progressive nonreproductive neurological symptoms closely parallel a postpubertal decrease in hypothalamic as well as extrahypothalamic expression of a master molecule that controls reproduction-...

Introduction The association between CYP2C19 poor metabolizer status, depressive symptom severity and hippocampal volume in humans is controversial. Progress in understanding not only the pathophysiology of depression but also potential protective mechanisms is important both for daily clinical practice and for the development of new antidepressant...

Multi-site imaging studies can increase statistical power and improve the reproducibility and generalizability of findings, yet data often need to be harmonized. One alternative to data harmonization in the normative modeling setting is Hierarchical Bayesian Regression (HBR), which overcomes some of the weaknesses of data harmonization. Here, we te...

Given controversial findings of reduced depressive symptom severity and increased hippocampus volume in CYP2C19 poor metabolizers, we sought to provide empirical evidence from a large-scale single-center longitudinal cohort in the community-dwelling adult population—Colaus|PsyCoLaus in Lausanne, Switzerland ( n = 4152). We looked for CYP2C19 genoty...

Objectives: Socioeconomic disadvantage predicts the level of cognitive performance in old age, but findings have been mixed for trajectories of performance. This study examined associations between life-course socioeconomic conditions, including social mobility, and cognitive performance assessed in terms of level and change, across multiple cogni...

The menopause transition involves changes in oestrogens and adipose tissue distribution, which may influence female brain health post-menopause. Although increased central fat accumulation is linked to risk of metabolic diseases, adipose tissue also serves as the primary biosynthesis site of oestrogens post-menopause. It is unclear whether differen...

Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSA) may be a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease is disturbed iron homeostasis leading to abnormal iron deposition in brain tissue. To date, there is no empirical evidence to support the hypothesis of altered brain iron homeostasis in patients with obstructive sleep apn...

Copy number variations (CNVs) are rare genomic deletions and duplications that can exert profound effects on brain and behavior. Previous reports of pleiotropy in CNVs imply that they converge on shared mechanisms at some level of pathway cascades, from genes to large-scale neural circuits to the phenome. However, studies to date have primarily exa...

Cardiometabolic risk (CMR) factors are associated with accelerated brain aging and increased risk for sex-dimorphic illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease (AD). Yet, it is unknown how CMRs interact with sex and apolipoprotein E-ϵ4 (APOE4), a known genetic risk factor for AD, to influence brain age across different life stages. Using age prediction b...

Age-related deterioration of balance control is widely regarded as an important phenomenon influencing quality of life and longevity, such that a more comprehensive understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying this process is warranted. Specifically, previous studies have reported that older adults typically show higher neural activity during...

Estimating age based on neuroimaging-derived data has become a popular approach to developing markers for brain integrity and health. While a variety of machine-learning algorithms can provide accurate predictions of age based on brain characteristics, there is significant variation in model accuracy reported across studies. We predicted age in two...

Socioeconomic status (SES) plays a significant role in health and disease. At the same time, early-life conditions affect neural function and structure, suggesting the brain may be a conduit for the biological embedding of SES. Here, we investigate the brain anatomy signatures of SES in a large-scale population cohort aged 45-85 years. We assess bo...

Motion during the acquisition of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data degrades image quality, hindering our capacity to characterise disease in patient populations. Quality control procedures allow the exclusion of the most affected images from analysis. However, the criterion for exclusion is difficult to determine objectively and exclusion can l...

The Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis copy number variant (ENIGMA-CNV) and 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome Working Groups (22q-ENIGMA WGs) were created to gain insight into the involvement of genetic factors in human brain development and related cognitive, psychiatric and behavioral manifestations. To that end, the ENIGMA-CNV WG has...

Background Socioeconomic disadvantage is a well-established predictor of morbidity and mortality, and is thought to accelerate the aging process. This study examined associations between life course socioeconomic conditions and the Pace of Aging, a longitudinal measure of age-related physiological decline. Methods Data were drawn from a Swiss popu...

Cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRs) are associated with accelerated brain aging and increased risk for sex-dimorphic illnesses such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Yet, it is unknown how CMRs interact with sex and apolipoprotein E-ε4 (APOE4), a known genetic risk factor for AD, to influence brain age across different life stages. Using age prediction...

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) is associated with brain pathology extending beyond temporal lobe structures. We sought to look for informative patterns of brain tissue properties in TLE that go beyond the established morphometry differences. We hypothesised that volume differences, particularly in hippocampus, will be paralleled by changes in brain m...

Crowding, the impairment of target discrimination in clutter, is the standard situation in vision. Traditionally, crowding is explained with (feedforward) models, in which only neighboring elements interact, leading to a “bottleneck” at the earliest stages of vision. It is with this implicit prior that most functional magnetic resonance imaging (fM...

Obesity is a major risk factor for a wide range of cardiometabolic diseases, however the impact of specific aspects of body morphology remains poorly understood. We combined the GWAS summary statistics of fourteen anthropometric traits from UK Biobank through principal component analysis to reveal four major independent axes: body size, adiposity,...

In visual crowding, the presence of neighboring elements impedes the perception of a target. Crowding is traditionally explained with feedforward, local models. However, increasing the number of neighboring elements can decrease crowding, i.e., lead to uncrowding, which demonstrates the inadequacy of the classic feedforward explanation. Global mode...

There is evidence that gray matter networks are disrupted in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and associated with cognitive impairment and faster disease progression. However, it remains unknown how these alterations are related to the presence of Apolipoprotein E isoform E4 (ApoE4), the most prominent genetic risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer’s...

he white matter (WM) architecture of the human brain changes in response to training, though fine-grained temporal characteristics of training-induced white matter plasticity remain unexplored. We investigated white matter microstructural changes using diffusion tensor imaging at 5 different time points in 26 sighted female adults during 8-months t...

Many copy number variants (CNVs) confer risk for the same range of neurodevelopmental symptoms and psychiatric conditions including autism and schizophrenia. Yet, to date neuroimaging studies have typically been carried out one mutation at a time, showing that CNVs have large effects on brain anatomy. Here, we aimed to characterize and quantify the...

Motion during the acquisition of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data degrades image quality, hindering our capacity to characterize disease in patient populations. Quality control procedures allow the exclusion of the most affected images from analysis. However, the criterion for exclusion is difficult to determine objectively and exclusion can l...

Pathogenic Copy Number Variants (CNVs) and aneuploidies alter gene dosage and are associated with neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders (NPDs) such as autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia. Brain mechanisms mediating genetic risk for NPDs remain largely unknown, but there is a rapid increase in morphometry studies of CNVs using T1-weighted s...

Estimating age based on neuroimaging-derived data has become a popular approach to developing markers for brain integrity and health. While a variety of machine-learning algorithms can provide accurate predictions of age based on brain characteristics, there is significant variation in model accuracy reported across studies. We predicted age based...