🧠 PVP Development Project

Statistical analysis and modeling of white matter development in tracts connecting the ventral and dorsal visual streams. Developed in collaboration with Professor Sophia Vinci-Booher (svincibo) as part of ongoing work at the Learning and NeuroDevelopment Lab (LaND Lab) at Vanderbilt University.

This codebase was used for statistical analysis and figure generation in:

Arif, Z., Ren, X., Pestilli, F., & Vinci-Booher, S.
White Matter Tracts Connecting Ventral and Dorsal Visual Streams Have Distinct Microstructural Profiles and Developmental Trajectories
Manuscript in progress

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📁 Repository Contents

• importData.m – imports diffusion metrics downloaded from Brainlife for each subject (update mainpath to local path of tractography)
• tractProfile.m – generates tract profiles based on dMRI metrics
• Lebel2010Model.m – implements the Poisson regression model from Lebel et al. (2010) for developmental trajectory fitting
• Lebel2008Model.m – implements the exponential growth model from Lebel et al. (2008)
• inflectionPointTest{x}.m – test scripts for the inflection point estimation method

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🎯 Project Goals

• Characterize the developmental trajectories of diffusion metrics (FA, MD, ODI, NDI) across key white matter tracts
• Compare microstructural differences between tracts connecting dorsal vs. ventral visual pathways
• Evaluate growth curves using established models (Poisson, exponential)
• Identify inflection points in development using custom testing methods
• Generate figures for manuscript publication

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🛠 Tools & Environment

• MATLAB (R2023a or compatible)
• MATLAB Statistics and Machine Learning Toolbox
• Brainlife.io (data source and expected upload platform)

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🚀 Getting Started

1. Clone this repository
2. Open MATLAB and add all project folders to your path
3. Modify the mainpath variable in importData.m to point to your local data directory
4. Run scripts in the following order:
   • importData.m
   • tractProfile.m
   • Lebel2008Model.m or Lebel2010Model.m
   • inflectionPointTest*.m (optional)

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📈 Outputs

• Modeled developmental trajectories of dMRI metrics across tracts
• Inflection point estimates for age-related transitions
• Publication-quality plots for group-level comparisons

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🧪 Data Availability

Final data will be made available through a public Brainlife.io project after publication.

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🧵 Citation

If you use or reference this code, please cite the forthcoming paper:

Arif, Z., Ren, X., Pestilli, F., & Vinci-Booher, S. (in progress). White Matter Tracts Connecting Ventral and Dorsal Visual Streams Have Distinct Microstructural Profiles and Developmental Trajectories.