Natalia Bielczyk

Ontology of Value

We employ pDyn (derived from “pandemics dynamics”), an agent-based epidemiological model, to forecast the fourth wave of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, primarily driven by the Delta variant, in Polish society. The model captures spatiotemporal dynamics of the epidemic spread, predicting disease-related states based on pathogen properties and behavioral f...

In this work, we describe and forecast the fourth wave of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, driven by the Delta variant, using pDyn — a detailed epidemiological agent-based model. It is designed to explain the spatiotemporal dynamics of the SARS-CoV-2 spread across Polish society, predicting the number and locations of disease-related states for agents livi...

We employ pDyn, an agent-based epidemiological model, to forecast the fourth wave of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, primarily driven by the Delta variant, in Polish society. The model captures spatiotemporal dynamics of the epidemic spread, predicting disease-related states based on pathogen properties and behavioral factors. We assess pDyn's validity, e...

Early career researchers (ECRs) are faced with a range of competing pressures in academia, making self-management key to building a successful career. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping undertook a group effort to gather helpful advice for ECRs in self-management. Bielczyk et al.

Mentorship is experience and/or knowledge‐based guidance. Mentors support, sponsor and advocate for mentees. Having one or more mentors when you seek advice can significantly influence and improve your research endeavours, well‐being and career development. Positive mentee–mentor relationships are vital for maintaining work–life balance and success...

Writing recommendation letters on behalf of students and other early‐career researchers is an important mentoring task within academia. An effective recommendation letter describes key candidate qualities such as academic achievements, extracurricular activities, outstanding personality traits, participation in and dedication to a particular discip...

Early career researchers (ECRs) are faced with a range of competing pressures in academia, making self-management key to building a successful career. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping undertook a group effort to gather helpful advice for ECRs in self-management.

Early career researchers (ECRs) are faced with a range of competing pressures in academia, making self-management key to building a successful career. The Organization for Human Brain Mapping undertook a group effort to gather helpful advice for ECRs in self-management. Keywords: ECRs; career development; early career researchers; mentoring; networ...

An enormous wealth of digital tools now exists for collaborating on scholarly research projects. In particular, it is now possible to collaboratively author research articles in an openly participatory and dynamic format. Here we describe and provide recommendations for a more open process of digital collaboration, and discuss the potential issues...

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is increasingly considered to be a neurodevelopmental disorder. However, despite insights in neural substrates of OCD in adults, less is known about mechanisms underlying compulsivity during brain development in children and adolescents. Therefore, we developed an adolescent rat model of compulsive checking behav...

Quantification and parametrisation of movement are widely used in animal behavioural paradigms. In particular, free movement in controlled conditions (e.g., open field paradigm) is used as a “proxy for indices of baseline and drug-induced behavioural changes. However, the analysis of this is often time- and labour-intensive and existing algorithms...

The brain is a complex, multiscale dynamical system composed of many interacting regions. Knowledge of the spatiotemporal organization of these interactions is critical for establishing a solid understanding of the brain’s functional architecture and the relationship between neural dynamics and cognition in health and disease. The possibility of st...

Elucidating causal, neurobiological underpinnings of behaviour is an ultimate goal of every neuroscientific study. However, due to the complexity of the brain as well as the complexity of the human environment, finding a causal architecture that underlies behaviour remains a formidable challenge. In this manuscript, we review the logical and concep...

Quantification and parametrization of movement in animal models is widely used in behavioral paradigms. In particular, free movement of an animal in controlled conditions (e.g., the open field paradigm) is used as a proxy for indices of baseline and drug-induced behavioural changes. However, the analysis of this is often time- and labour-intensive...

An enormous wealth of digital tools now exists for collaborating on scholarly research projects. In particular, it is now possible to collaboratively author research articles in an openly participatory and dynamic format. Here we describe and provide recommendations for a more open process of collaboration, and discuss the potential issues and pitf...

For over two decades, the field of neuroimaging hosted a vigorous debate regarding the neural origin, functional significance, and clinical potential of resting functional MRI (rfMRI). While some issues remain unresolved, a large body of work has now established the reliability, neural origins, behavioral relevance, and sensitivity to pathology of...

It is known that cortical networks operate on the edge of instability, in which oscillations can appear. However, the influence of this dynamic regime on performance in decision making, is not well understood. In this work, we propose a population model of decision making based on a winner-take-all mechanism. Using this model, we demonstrate that l...

In the past two decades, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) has been used to relate neuronal network activity to cognitive processing and behavior. Recently this approach has been augmented by algorithms that allow us to infer causal links between component populations of neuronal networks. Multiple inference procedures have been proposed...

This is a working paper for a project launched and managed by the members of the OHBM Student and Postdoc Special Interest Group (SP-SIG, www.ohbmtrainees.com), in collaboration with two guest early career researchers, Dan Kessler from University of Michigan and Daniel Lurie from University of Berkeley. We would like to further develop the manuscri...

The distribution of colors in the environment shapes local peoples’ perceptions of those colors, a phenomenon observable across all types of environments. We analyzed color categorization data from each of the 107 languages in the World Color Survey (WCS) database. Next, we grouped the WCS languages according to their geographic location, with refe...

Background The gene-gene associations in functional genomics are typically operationalized through correlational or information-theoretical measures: as an undirected graph of pairwise interactions between genes, where nodes represent genes and edges represent associations between pairs of genes. Such a functional connectivity can be uninformative...

Mentorship in academia facilitates personal growth through pairing trainees with mentors who can share insight and expertise. Expertise can be purely academic, on work‐life balance, personal branding and networking, or general career advice. Mentoring has been shown to be beneficial for mentees, both in terms of objective research productivity (Mus...

For over two decades, the field of neuroimaging hosted a vigorous debate regarding the neural origin, functional significance, and clinical potential of resting functional MRI (rfMRI). While some issues remain unresolved, a large body of work has now established the reliability, neural origins, behavioral relevance, and sensitivity to pathology of...

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD) are often associated with emotion recognition difficulties. This is the first eye-tracking study to examine emotional face recognition (i.e., gazing behavior) in a direct comparison of male adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Oppositional Defiant...

a commentary for Borsboom et al. (2018) ‘Brain disorders? Not really… Why network structures block reductionism in psychopathology research’. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, DOI: 10.1017/S0140525X17002266

Autism is a disorder defined by social deficits, including abnormal gaze patterns. Previous research suggests that gaze fixation toward the eye region of a face might cause a heightened emotional response in autism, perhaps explaining why individuals with autism avoid looking at the eyes. The present experiment proposes to broaden knowledge about e...

It is known that cortical networks operate on the edge of instability, in which oscillations can appear. However, the influence of this dynamic regime on performance in decision making, is not well understood. In this work, we propose a population model of decision making based on a winner-take-all mechanism. Using this model, we demonstrate that l...

Functional connectivity has been shown to be a very promising tool for studying the large-scale functional architecture of the human brain. In network research in fMRI, functional connectivity is considered as a set of pair-wise interactions between the nodes of the network. These interactions are typically operationalized through the full or parti...

Reduced top-down control by cortical areas is assumed to underlie pathological forms of aggression. While the precise underlying molecular mechanisms are still elusive, it seems that balancing the excitatory and inhibitory tones of cortical brain areas has a role in aggression control. The molecular mechanisms underpinning aggression control were e...

In this work, we propose a population model to characterize the binary decision making as an outcome of a winner-take-all competition between two neuronal populations communicating through plastic synapses. In particular, we study the impact of the inputs stimulating the neuronal populations on the time-course and efficiency of the decision making...

Impairments in decision-making are frequently observed in neurodegenerative diseases, but the mechanisms underlying such pathologies remain elusive. In this work, we study, on the basis of novel time-delayed neuronal population model, if the delay in self-inhibition terms can explain those impairments. Analysis of proposed system reveals that there...

Purpose Multiple computational studies have demonstrated that essentially all current analytical approaches to determine effective connectivity perform poorly when applied to synthetic functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) datasets. In this study, we take a theoretical approach to investigate the potential factors facilitating and hindering...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a serious condition with a lifetime prevalence exceeding 16% worldwide. MDD is a heterogeneous disorder that involves multiple behavioral symptoms on the one hand and multiple neuronal circuits on the other hand. In this review, we integrate the literature on cognitive and physiological biomarkers of MDD with the...

Estimating causal interactions in the brain from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data remains a formidable task. Multiple studies have demonstrated that essentially all current analytical approaches to determine effective connectivity perform poorly even when applied to synthetic fMRI datasets. Recent advances in this field include met...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a serious condition with a lifetime prevalence exceeding 16% worldwide. MDD is a heterogeneous disorder that involves multiple behavioral symptoms on the one hand and multiple neuronal circuits on the other hand. In this review, we integrate the literature on cognitive and physiological biomarkers of MDD with the...

Major depression disorder (MDD) is a serious medical condition of a global lifetime prevalence exceeding 16% in the US [1], and growing share in the global burden of disease, anticipated to reach the first place in the WHO rating by 2030 [2]. Nevertheless, neural underpinnings of MDD are far from being explained. Systems generating affective state...

We discuss two models of interpersonal interactions with delay. The first model is linear, and allows the presentation of a rigorous mathematical analysis of stability, while the second is nonlinear and a typical local stability analysis is thus performed. The linear model is a direct extension of the classic Strogatz model. On the other hand, as i...

When interpersonal interactions between individuals are described by the (discrete or continuous) dynamical systems, the interactions are usually assumed to be instantaneous: the rates of change of the actual states of the actors at given instant of time are assumed to depend on their states at the same time. In reality the natural time delay shoul...