Recording of Network Science Society Colloquium Series Petra Vértes

Network Science Colloquium Series, 03/26/2025 Petra Vértes Joining the dots: Connectomics, genomics and therapeutics for neurodevelopmental disorders The last twenty years have witnessed extraordinarily rapid progress in basic neuroscience, including the collection of unprecedented amounts of neuroimaging, genetic and other data relevant to neuroscience and mental health. However, the translation of this progress into improved understanding of brain function and dysfunction has been comparatively slow. As a result, the development of therapeutics for mental health has stagnated too. One central challenge has been to extract meaning from these large, complex, multivariate datasets, which requires a shift towards systems-level approaches. A second challenge has been reconciling different scales of investigation, from genes and molecules to cells, circuits, tissue, whole-brain, and ultimately behaviour. In this talk I will describe several strands of work using connectomics and other network-based approaches to bridge these gaps. Topics will include: using artificial neural networks to link the organization of large-scale brain connectivity to cognitive function; using multivariate statistical methods to link disease-related changes in brain networks to the underlying biological processes; and using network-based approaches to move from genetic insights towards drug discovey. Finally, I will discuss how simple organisms such as C. elegans can serve to inspire, test, and validate new methods and insights in networks neuroscience.