Budhachandra Khundrakpam, PhD
I am a Research Associate at the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University under the supervision of Prof. Alan Evans. I have 9 years of research experience in computational neuroscience, machine learning and neuroimaging with applications in understanding brain and cognitive development.
My interest in neurodevelopment emerged at the start of my postdoctoral fellowship at the Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University in Canada. During this time, I studied several aspects of brain development using a large-scale longitudinal dataset of normally developing children and adolescents, namely the NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development. This resulted in several papers – new insights into developmental changes in brain organization, brain-behavior relations and methodological advances. With the acquired skill set on developmental neuroscience, I have recently started exploring the social and genetic vulnerabilities that may precede atypical brain development as well as protective factors that might mitigate risk.
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Broadly, my research is focused on combining multi-modal imaging, genetic and cognitive data toward better characterization of normal and abnormal brain development. I believe such integrative approaches will provide critical insights towards understanding the origin and etiology of neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism.
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For details of my education, research experience, awards and fellowships, please see my Curriculum Vitae
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News
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Budhachandra Khundrakpam awarded the NARSAD 2020 Young Investigator Grant (75,000 USD for 2 years) by Brain & Behavior Research Foundation for the project 'Impact of substance use on adolescent brain development and mental health outcomes'
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New paper out in Human Brain Mapping - Distinct influence of parental occupation on cortical thickness and surface area in children and adolecents: Relation to self-esteem. Collaborative work with social scientists (Prof. Ian Gold & Prof. Suparna Choudhury) at Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University
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New paper out in Brain Communications - Neural correlates of polygenic risk score for autism spectrum disorders in general population. Collaborative work with Prof. Alain Dagher at Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University and Prof. Uku Vainik at Institute of Psychology, University of Tartu
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New book chapter (In Press) - Research consortia and large-scale repositories for studying intelligence. In: AK Barbey, S Karama, RJ Haier (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence and Cognitive Neuroscience, 2020. Cambridge University Press
My Latest Research
Now published in Brain Communications, we show that neural correlates of polygenic risk for autism in the general population reflect cortical abnormalities associated with autism in clinical population. Our findings support a continuum model of autism, as opposed to categorical models traditionally seen in psychiatric disorders.
In our new paper (in Human Brain Mapping), we show spatially distributed patterns of (parental occupation × age) interaction with cortical thickness (localized at the left caudal middle frontal, the left inferior parietal and the right superior parietal). We demonstrate that parental occupation is an important and neglected indicator of childhood and adolescent SES compared to absolute measures of material resources or academic attainment.