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Record W7115035599

Challenges in predicting brain age with high-dimensional neuroimaging data: insights from quantile models and morphometricity estimation

2025· dissertation· en· W7115035599 on OpenAlexaff

Bibliographic record

VenueeScholarship@McGill (McGill) · 2025
Typedissertation
Languageen
FieldNeuroscience
TopicFunctional Brain Connectivity Studies
Canadian institutionsMcGill University Health Centre
Fundersnot available
KeywordsEstimationNeuroimagingQuantileArtificial neural networkPattern recognition (psychology)
DOInot available

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abnormal brain evolution is linked to various neurological conditions, including Autism Spectrum Disorder and Alzheimer's Disease.This anomaly can be quantified using "brain age," which identifies the age group within a healthy cohort whose brain resembles that of the individual.A significant difference between predicted brain age and chronological age suggests delayed brain development or accelerated aging.Current brain age prediction models mainly focus on the average brain age within a population, based on imaging profiles at a specific chronological age.However, little attention is given to brain age distributions and the behavior of various quantiles.Inspired by classic infant growth charts, my primary goal is to develop a comprehensive growth model for the human brain that provides predictions across multiple quantiles.Such a model would enhance our ability to quantify deviations in an individual's brain development from the normal distribution.Given the complexity of structural brain imaging data, flexible machine learning models are necessary.My research highlights a lack of suitable methods for validating and evaluating these complex models, addressing two key shortcomings in my thesis.First, I explore the proportion of phenotypic variance explained by features, often used as a benchmark for the maximum achievable prediction accuracy of statistical models.This proportion, known as "morphometricity" in brain morphology, is typically estimated using linear mixed-effects models.Through extensive simulations, I show that choices of hyperparameters(e.g.kernel and bandwidth) significantly impact morphometricity estimates.Conventional likelihood-based model selection methods tend to favor i Dr. Celia Greenwood and Dr. Jean-Baptiste Poline.Your invaluable insights, unwavering patience, and encouragement have been instrumental in shaping my research and guiding me through the challenges of this project.I am grateful for the freedom you allowed me to explore my own ideas, and for your unwavering belief in my work.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.013
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.051
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: Simulation or modeling
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.013
Threshold uncertainty score0.066

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0130.051
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.002
Scholarly communication0.0030.003
Open science0.0030.002
Research integrity0.0020.004
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.095
GPT teacher head0.282
Teacher spread0.187 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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