Samantha J Rae

PhD thesis:

Large-Scale Functional Brain Network Organisation Across Adolescence: Developmental Trajectories, Oscillatory Dynamics, Polygenic Risk and Executive Function

My doctoral research explores how large-scale functional brain networks reorganise across adolescence, how this reorganisation supports the emergence of higher-order cognition, and how it is shaped by neurophysiological mechanisms and genetic factors.

Drawing on large-scale longitudinal datasets, the research will characterise developmental trajectories of intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) and examine how individual differences in their organisation relate to executive function. It will further investigate the oscillatory dynamics underlying network organisation, examining how developmental changes in rhythmic coupling relate to shifts in network integration and segregation. The role of genetic variation will also be investigated: polygenic risk for neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders will be assessed in relation to ICN organisation, exploring whether ICNs represent an intermediate phenotype through which genetic liability may be expressed. Together, these strands aim to provide a multi-level, mechanistic account of functional brain network development and the neurocognitive heterogeneity that emerges during this critical but understudied developmental window.

Who or what inspired you to pursue your research interests?

My interest in cognition emerged from observing striking individual differences in attentional and self-regulatory capacity while working as an English teacher at a Montessori kindergarten in Beijing, prompting me to pursue a BSc in Psychology. Research roles investigating working memory and inhibitory control refined this into a focus on executive function, motivating an MPhil in Cognitive Neuroscience. There, investigating the multiple-demand network as a neural substrate of domain-general cognitive control reoriented my interest from cognitive processes to the functional brain networks underlying them. I am now interested in how these networks reorganise across development to support increasingly complex cognition.