Tamara Vanderwal

BSc, MD, MAR

Investigator, BC Children's Hospital
Child Psychiatrist, TOPs Program

The Naturalistic Neuroimaging Lab uses movies to study complex patterns of brain function in child psychiatric disorders. Using movies helps us study children who have a hard time staying still inside the MRI machine. The movies also enable us to study the brain as it processes complex, dynamic streams of information like it does in real life. This approach is similar to having a patient run on a treadmill while studying that person's heart function. We design and test movies to evoke specific symptoms or types of cognitive processes, and are developing novel analyses to leverage the unique kind of data we acquire using movies in functional MRI.

Academic Affiliations

  • Assistant Professor, , Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia
  • Research Theme: Brain, Behaviour & Development

Individualized network topography in pre-adolescent children and adults using naturalistic precision fMRI

Shefali Rai and Kate J. Godfrey and Kirk Graff and Ryann Tansey and Daria Merrikh and Shelly Yin and Matthew Feigelis and Damion V. Demeter and Tamara Vanderwal and Deanna J. Greene and Signe Bray

DOI: 10.64898/2026.03.05.709899

03 / 2026

Minimal Variation in Functional Connectivity in Relation to Daily Affect

eneuro

Kate J. Godfrey and Shefali Rai and Kirk Graff and Shelly Yin and Daria Merrikh and Ryann Tansey and Tamara Vanderwal and Ashley D. Harris and Signe Bray

DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0209-24.2024

12 / 2024

Mapping patterns of thought onto brain activity during movie-watching

Raven S Wallace and Bront Mckeown and Ian Goodall-Halliwell and Louis Chitiz and Philippe Forest and Theodoros Karapanagiotidis and Bridget Mulholland and Adam G Turnbull and Tamara Vanderwal and Samyogita Hardikar and Tirso Gonzalez Alam and Boris Bernhardt and Hao-Ting Wang and Will Strawson and Michael Milham and Ting Xu and Daniel Margulies and Giulia L Poerio and Elizabeth Jefferies and Jeremy I Skipper and Jeffery Wammes and Robert Leech and Jonathan Smallwood

DOI: 10.7554/eLife.97731.3

11 / 2024

WHATS THE BIG DEAL?: EMERGING THEMES IN CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRIC NEUROIMAGING RESEARCH

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Tamara Vanderwal

DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2024.07.832

10 / 2024

Using fingerprinting as a testbed for strategies to improve reproducibility of functional connectivity

Jivesh Ramduny and Tamara Vanderwal and Clare Kelly

DOI: 10.1101/2024.06.21.599225

06 / 2024

Data rescue in high-motion youth cohorts for robust and reproducible brain-behavior relationships

Jivesh Ramduny and Tamara Vanderwal and Clare Kelly

DOI: 10.1101/2024.06.04.597447

06 / 2024

Increasing the representation of minoritized youth for inclusive and reproducible brain-behavior associations

Jivesh Ramduny and Lucina Q. Uddin and Tamara Vanderwal and Eric Feczko and Damien A. Fair and Clare Kelly and Arielle Baskin-Sommers

DOI: 10.1101/2024.06.22.600221

06 / 2024

Subgenual cingulate connectivity as a treatment predictor during low-frequency right dorsolateral prefrontal rTMS: A concurrent TMS-fMRI study

Brain Stimulation

Vinh Tan and Jerrold Jeyachandra and Ruiyang Ge and Erin W. Dickie and Elizabeth Gregory and Tamara Vanderwal and Fidel Vila-Rodriguez and Colin Hawco

DOI: 10.1016/j.brs.2023.07.051

07 / 2023

Cortical gradients during naturalistic processing are hierarchical and modality-specific

NeuroImage

Ahmad Samara and Jeffrey Eilbott and Daniel S. Margulies and Ting Xu and Tamara Vanderwal

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2023.120023

05 / 2023

Getting the nod: Pediatric head motion in a transdiagnostic sample during movie- and resting-state fMRI

PLOS ONE

Simon Frew and Ahmad Samara and Hallee Shearer and Jeffrey Eilbott and Tamara Vanderwal

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265112

04 / 2022

Naturalistic imaging: The use of ecologically valid conditions to study brain function

NeuroImage

Emily S. Finn and Enrico Glerean and Uri Hasson and Tamara Vanderwal

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118776

02 / 2022

Fractal-Based Analysis of fMRI BOLD Signal During Naturalistic Viewing Conditions

Frontiers in Physiology

Olivia Campbell and Tamara Vanderwal and Alexander Mark Weber

DOI: 10.3389/fphys.2021.809943

01 / 2022

Stability and similarity of the pediatric connectome as developmental measures

NeuroImage

Tamara Vanderwal and Jeffrey Eilbott and Clare Kelly and Simon Frew and Todd S. Woodward and Michael P. Milham and F. Xavier Castellanos

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117537

02 / 2021

Towards clinical applications of movie fMRI

NeuroImage

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116860

08 / 2020

ADHD desynchronizes brain activity during watching a distracted multi-talker conversation

NeuroImage

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116352

11 / 2019

The Functional Brain Organization of an Individual Allows Prediction of Measures of Social Abilities Transdiagnostically in Autism and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Biological Psychiatry

Evelyn M.R. Lake and Emily S. Finn and Stephanie M. Noble and Tamara Vanderwal and Xilin Shen and Monica D. Rosenberg and Marisa N. Spann and Marvin M. Chun and Dustin Scheinost and R. Todd Constable

DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2019.02.019

08 / 2019

Shared understanding of narratives is correlated with shared neural responses

NeuroImage

Mai Nguyen and Tamara Vanderwal and Uri Hasson

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.09.010

01 / 2019

Movies in the magnet: Naturalistic paradigms in developmental functional neuroimaging

Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience

Tamara Vanderwal and Jeffrey Eilbott and F. Xavier Castellanos

DOI: 10.1016/j.dcn.2018.10.004

11 / 2018

The Variability of Neural Responses to Naturalistic Videos Change with Age and Sex

eneuro

Agustin Petroni and Samantha S. Cohen and Lei Ai and Nicolas Langer and Simon Henin and Tamara Vanderwal and Michael P. Milham and Lucas C. Parra

DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0244-17.2017

01 / 2018

Individual differences in functional connectivity during naturalistic viewing conditions

NeuroImage

Tamara Vanderwal and Jeffrey Eilbott and Emily S. Finn and R. Cameron Craddock and Adam Turnbull and F. Xavier Castellanos

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.06.027

08 / 2017

The Healthy Brain Network Serial Scanning Initiative: a resource for evaluating inter-individual differences and their reliabilities across scan conditions and sessions

GigaScience

David OConnor and Natan Vega Potler and Meagan Kovacs and Ting Xu and Lei Ai and John Pellman and Tamara Vanderwal and Lucas C. Parra and Samantha Cohen and Satrajit Ghosh and Jasmine Escalera and Natalie Grant-Villegas and Yael Osman and Anastasia Bui and R. Cameron Craddock and Michael P. Milham

DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giw011

01 / 2017

Age and sex modulate the variability of neural responses to naturalistic videos

Agustin Petroni and Samantha Cohen and Lei Ai and Nicolas Langer and Simon Henin and Tamara Vanderwal and Michael P. Milham and Lucas C. Parra

DOI: 10.1101/089060

11 / 2016

Polypharmacy in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: More Than the Sum of Its Parts?

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Tamara Vanderwal

DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2016.04.021

08 / 2016

Inscapes: A movie paradigm to improve compliance in functional magnetic resonance imaging

NeuroImage

Tamara Vanderwal and Clare Kelly and Jeffrey Eilbott and Linda C. Mayes and F. Xavier Castellanos

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.07.069

11 / 2015

Of Bandwagons and Bathwater: The Value of Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Child Psychiatric Research

Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Tamara Vanderwal and Clare Kelly and F. Xavier Castellanos

DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2013.03.004

06 / 2013

Self, mother and abstract other: An fMRI study of reflective social processing

NeuroImage

Tamara Vanderwal and Elinora Hunyadi and Daniel W. Grupe and Caitlin M. Connors and Robert T. Schultz

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.03.058

07 / 2008

Grants

"Brain Mapping of Discrete Developmental Periods", American Psychiatric Association/Lilly Psychiatric Research Fellowship

“The use of movies to assay brain network dynamics in ADHD”,

Klingenstein Family Foundation

"Intrinsic Connectivity Networks in Young Children", American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

"Developmental Trajectories of Intrinsic Functional Connectivity", Allison Family Foundation

Honours & Awards

American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Junior Investigator Award

Resident Teaching Award, Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine

Contributing Editor (2014-2017), The Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry

Yale Psychiatry Research Scholar, Yale School of Medicine

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