Christos Davatzikos, Ph.D.

As the search for successful Alzheimer’s disease drugs remains elusive, experts believe that identifying biomarkers — early biological signs of the disease — could be key to solving the treatment conundrum. However, the rapid collection of data from tens of thousands of Alzheimer’s patients far exceeds the scientific community’s ability to make sense of it.

Now, with funding expected to total $17.8 million from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health, researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will collaborate with 11 research centers to determine more precise diagnostic biomarkers and drug targets for the disease, which affects nearly 50 million people worldwide. For the project, the teams will apply advanced artificial intelligence (AI) methods to integrate and find patterns in genetic, imaging, and clinical data from over 60,000 Alzheimer’s patients — representing one of the largest and most ambitious research undertakings of its kind… Continue reading.

An analysis of brain scans from more than 300 patients suggests two distinct neuroanatomical subtypes of schizophrenia. Researchers published the findings online in the journal Brain.

“In the future, we’re not going to be saying, ‘This patient has schizophrenia.’ We’re going to be saying, ‘This patient has this subtype’ or ‘this abnormal pattern,’ rather than having a wide umbrella under which everyone is categorized,” said principal investigator Christos Davatzikos, PhD, the Wallace T. Miller Professor of Radiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia… Continue reading.

Schizophrenia is a complex neurological condition characterized by disorganized thinking, difficulty concentrating, hallucinations, and delusions. Affecting up to 1% of people worldwide, the cause and disease mechanisms of schizophrenia are not well understood.

The present study, led by principal investigator Christos Davatzikos, PhD, the Wallace T. Miller professor of radiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, examined the brain anatomy of people with schizophrenia. Davatzikos’s team used a large, diverse sample of volunteers that spanned three continents. Working with researchers in Germany, Italy, and the UK, they analyzed the brains of 307 schizophrenia patients and 364 healthy people included as controls… Continue reading.

Adolescence marks not only the period of physical maturation bridging childhood and adulthood, but also a crucial period for remodeling of the human brain. A Penn study reveals new patterns of coordinated development in the outer layer of the cerebrum of the human brain and describes how these structural patterns relate to functional networks.

The team found the convergence between structural and functional networks was inversely related to functional complexity. Motor, sensory, visual and functional networks aligned to distinct structural networks. This unique representation of maturation may open new opportunities for future studies into many psychiatric disorders that might begin during this age. A team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania publishes the findings this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences… Continue reading.

WASHINGTON, D.C.— The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the pending induction of Christos Davatzikos, Ph.D., Wallace T. Miller Sr. Professor of Radiology, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, to its College of Fellows. Dr. Davatzikos was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows For outstanding contributions to the fields of medical image processing, biomedical image analysis, and medical imaging science.