Cumulative Effects of Resting-State Connectivity Across All Brain Networks Significantly Correlate with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms.

Identification of replicable neuroimaging correlates of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has been hindered by small sample sizes, small effects, and heterogeneity of methods. Given evidence that ADHD is associated with alterations in widely distributed brain networks and the small effects of individual brain features, a whole-brain perspective focusing on cumulative effects is warranted. The use of large, multisite samples is crucial for improving reproducibility and clinical utility of brain-wide MRI association studies. To address this, a polyneuro risk score (PNRS) representing cumulative, brain-wide, ADHD-associated resting-state functional connectivity was constructed and validated using data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD, N = 5,543, 51.5% female) study, and was further tested in the independent Oregon-ADHD-1000 case-control cohort (N = 553, 37.4% female). The ADHD PNRS was significantly associated with ADHD symptoms in both cohorts after accounting for relevant covariates (p < 0.001). The most predictive PNRS involved all brain networks, though the strongest effects were concentrated among the default mode and cingulo-opercular networks. In the longitudinal Oregon-ADHD-1000, non-ADHD youth had significantly lower PNRS (Cohen's d = -0.318, robust p = 5.5 × 10-4) than those with persistent ADHD (age 7-19). The PNRS, however, did not mediate polygenic risk for ADHD. Brain-wide connectivity was robustly associated with ADHD symptoms in two independent cohorts, providing further evidence of widespread dysconnectivity in ADHD. Evaluation in enriched samples demonstrates the promise of the PNRS approach for improving reproducibility in neuroimaging studies and unraveling the complex relationships between brain connectivity and behavioral disorders.

Baseline T cell immune phenotypes predict virologic and disease control upon SARS-CoV infection in Collaborative Cross mice.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed that infection with SARS-CoV-2 can result in a wide range of clinical outcomes in humans. An incomplete understanding of immune correlates of protection represents a major barrier to the design of vaccines and therapeutic approaches to prevent infection or limit disease. This deficit is largely due to the lack of prospectively collected, pre-infection samples from individuals that go on to become infected with SARS-CoV-2. Here, we utilized data from genetically diverse Collaborative Cross (CC) mice infected with SARS-CoV to determine whether baseline T cell signatures are associated with a lack of viral control and severe disease upon infection. SARS-CoV infection of CC mice results in a variety of viral load trajectories and disease outcomes. Overall, a dysregulated, pro-inflammatory signature of circulating T cells at baseline was associated with severe disease upon infection. Our study serves as proof of concept that circulating T cell signatures at baseline can predict clinical and virologic outcomes upon SARS-CoV infection. Identification of basal immune predictors in humans could allow for identification of individuals at highest risk of severe clinical and virologic outcomes upon infection, who may thus most benefit from available clinical interventions to restrict infection and disease.

Gene-by-Environment Interaction Effects of Social Adversity on Externalizing Behavior in ABCD Youth.

This study tested whether multiple domains of social adversity, including neighborhood opportunity/deprivation and life stress, moderate genetic (A), common environmental (C), and unique environmental (E) influences on externalizing behaviors in 760 same-sex twin pairs (332 monozygotic; 428 dizygotic) ages 10-11 from the ABCD Study. Proportion of C influences on externalizing behavior increased at higher neighborhood adversity (lower overall opportunity). A decreased and C and E increased at lower levels of educational opportunity. A increased at lower health-environment and social-economic opportunity levels. For life stress, A decreased and E increased with number of experienced events. Results for educational opportunity and stressful life experiences suggest a bioecological gene-environment interaction pattern such that environmental influences predominate at higher levels of adversity, whereas limited access to healthcare, housing, and employment stability may potentiate genetic liability for externalizing behavior via a diathesis-stress mechanism. More detailed operationalization of social adversity in gene-environment interaction studies is needed.

Smaller total brain volume but not subcortical structure volume related to common genetic risk for ADHD.

BACKGROUND: Mechanistic endophenotypes can inform process models of psychopathology and aid interpretation of genetic risk factors. Smaller total brain and subcortical volumes are associated with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and provide clues to its development. This study evaluates whether common genetic risk for ADHD is associated with total brain volume (TBV) and hypothesized subcortical structures in children. METHODS: Children 7-15 years old were recruited for a case-control study (N = 312, N = 199 ADHD). Children were assessed with a multi-informant, best-estimate diagnostic procedure and motion-corrected MRI measured brain volumes. Polygenic scores were computed based on discovery data from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (N = 19 099 ADHD, N = 34 194 controls) and the ENIGMA + CHARGE consortium (N = 26 577). RESULTS: ADHD was associated with smaller TBV, and altered volumes of caudate, cerebellum, putamen, and thalamus after adjustment for TBV; however, effects were larger and statistically reliable only in boys. TBV was associated with an ADHD polygenic score [ß = -0.147 (-0.27 to -0.03)], and mediated a small proportion of the effect of polygenic risk on ADHD diagnosis (average ACME = 0.0087, p = 0.012). This finding was stronger in boys (average ACME = 0.019, p = 0.008). In addition, we confirm genetic variation associated with whole brain volume, via an intracranial volume polygenic score. CONCLUSION: Common genetic risk for ADHD is not expressed primarily as developmental alterations in subcortical brain volumes, but appears to alter brain development in other ways, as evidenced by TBV differences. This is among the first demonstrations of this effect using molecular genetic data. Potential sex differences in these effects warrant further examination.

Immune Predictors of Mortality After Ribonucleic Acid Virus Infection.

BACKGROUND: Virus infections result in a range of clinical outcomes for the host, from asymptomatic to severe or even lethal disease. Despite global efforts to prevent and treat virus infections to limit morbidity and mortality, the continued emergence and re-emergence of new outbreaks as well as common infections such as influenza persist as a health threat. Challenges to the prevention of severe disease after virus infection include both a paucity of protective vaccines as well as the early identification of individuals with the highest risk that may require supportive treatment. METHODS: We completed a screen of mice from the Collaborative Cross (CC) that we infected with influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus, and West Nile virus. RESULTS: The CC mice exhibited a range of disease manifestations upon infections, and we used this natural variation to identify strains with mortality after infection and strains exhibiting no mortality. We then used comprehensive preinfection immunophenotyping to identify global baseline immune correlates of protection from mortality to virus infection. CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that immune phenotypes might be leveraged to identify humans at highest risk of adverse clinical outcomes upon infection, who may most benefit from intensive clinical interventions, in addition to providing insight for rational vaccine design.

Creation of a novel trigeminal tractography atlas for automated trigeminal nerve identification.

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) tractography has been successfully used to study the trigeminal nerves (TGNs) in many clinical and research applications. Currently, identification of the TGN in tractography data requires expert nerve selection using manually drawn regions of interest (ROIs), which is prone to inter-observer variability, time-consuming and carries high clinical and labor costs. To overcome these issues, we propose to create a novel anatomically curated TGN tractography atlas that enables automated identification of the TGN from dMRI tractography. In this paper, we first illustrate the creation of a trigeminal tractography atlas. Leveraging a well-established computational pipeline and expert neuroanatomical knowledge, we generate a data-driven TGN fiber clustering atlas using tractography data from 50 subjects from the Human Connectome Project. Then, we demonstrate the application of the proposed atlas for automated TGN identification in new subjects, without relying on expert ROI placement. Quantitative and visual experiments are performed with comparison to expert TGN identification using dMRI data from two different acquisition sites. We show highly comparable results between the automatically and manually identified TGNs in terms of spatial overlap and visualization, while our proposed method has several advantages. First, our method performs automated TGN identification, and thus it provides an efficient tool to reduce expert labor costs and inter-operator bias relative to expert manual selection. Second, our method is robust to potential imaging artifacts and/or noise that can prevent successful manual ROI placement for TGN selection and hence yields a higher successful TGN identification rate.

Evaluating chronic emotional dysregulation and irritability in relation to ADHD and depression genetic risk in children with ADHD.

BACKGROUND: A central nosological problem concerns the etiological relationship of emotional dysregulation with ADHD. Molecular genetic risk scores provide a novel method for informing this question. METHODS: Participants were 514 community-recruited children of Northern European descent age 7-11 defined as ADHD or non-ADHD by detailed research evaluation. Parents-rated ADHD on standardized ratings and child temperament on the Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ) and reported on ADHD and comorbid disorders by semi-structured clinical interview. Categorical and dimensional variables were created for ADHD, emotional dysregulation (implicating disruption of regulation of both anger-irritability and of positive valence surgency-sensation seeking), and irritability alone (anger dysregulation). Genome-wide polygenic risk scores (PRS) were computed for ADHD and depression genetic liability. Structural equation models and computationally derived emotion profiles guided analysis. RESULTS: The ADHD PRS was associated in variable-centered analyses with irritability (ß = .179, 95% CI = 0.087-0.280; ΔR2  = .034, p < .0002), but also with surgency/sensation seeking (B = .146, 95%CI = 0.052-0.240, ΔR2 =.022, p = .002). In person-centered analysis, the ADHD PRS was elevated in the emotion dysregulation ADHD group versus other ADHD children (OR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.03-2.20, Nagelkerke ΔR2  = .013, p = .033) but did not differentiate irritable from surgent ADHD profiles. All effects were independent of variation in ADHD severity across traits or groups. The depression PRS was related to oppositional defiant disorder but not to ADHD emotion dysregulation. CONCLUSIONS: Irritability-anger and surgency-sensation seeking, as forms of negative and positively valenced dysregulated affect in ADHD populations, both relate principally to ADHD genetic risk and not mood-related genetic risk.

Brachytherapy with surgical resection as salvage treatment for recurrent high-grade meningiomas: a matched cohort study.

PURPOSE: To evaluate surgical resection with brachytherapy placement as a salvage treatment in patients with recurrent high-grade meningioma who exhausted prior external beam treatment options. METHODS: Single-center retrospective review of our institutional experience of brachytherapy implantation from 2012 to 2018. The primary outcome of the study was progression free survival (PFS). Secondary outcomes included overall survival (OS) and complications. A matched cohort of patients not treated with brachytherapy over the same time period was evaluated as a control group. All patients had received prior radiation treatment and underwent planned gross total resection (GTR) surgery. RESULTS: A total of 27 cases were evaluated. Compared with prior treatment, brachytherapy implantation demonstrated a statistically significant improvement in tumor control [HR 0.316 (0.101 - 0.991), p = 0.034]. PFS-6 and PFS-12 were 92.3% and 84.6%, respectively. Compared with the matched control cohort, brachytherapy treatment demonstrated improved PFS [HR 0.310 (0.103 - 0.933), p = 0.030]. Overall survival was not statistically significantly different between groups [HR 0.381 (0.073 - 1.982), p = 0.227]. Overall postoperative complications were comparable between groups, although there was a higher incidence of radiation necrosis in the brachytherapy cohort. CONCLUSION: Brachytherapy with planned GTR improved PFS in recurrent high-grade meningioma patients who exhausted prior external beam radiation treatment options. Future improvement of brachytherapy dose delivery methods and techniques may continue to prolong control rates and improve outcomes for this challenging group of patients.

Clinical, pathologic, and imaging characteristics of pituitary null cell adenomas as defined according to the 2017 World Health Organization criteria: a case series from two pituitary centers.

PURPOSE: The 2017 World Health Organization classification of pituitary tumors redefined pituitary null cell adenomas (NCAs) by restricting this diagnostic category to pituitary tumors that are negative for pituitary transcription factors and adenohypophyseal hormones. The clinical behavior of this redefined entity has not been widely studied, and this is a major shortcoming of the classification. This study evaluated the imaging and clinical features of NCAs from two pituitary centers and compared them with those of gonadotroph adenomas (GAs). METHODS: Imaging, pathologic, and clinical characteristics of NCAs and GAs were retrospectively reviewed. Tumor immunohistochemistry was performed to confirm absence of adenohypophyseal hormones and pituitary transcription factor expression. RESULTS: Thirty-one NCAs were compared with 38 GAs. NCAs were more likely to invade the cavernous sinus (15/31 [48%] vs. 5/38 [13%], P = .003) and had a higher proliferative index (i.e., MIB-1 > 3%, 11/31 [35%] vs. 5/38 [13%], P = .04). Gross total resection was less likely in the NCA group (19/31 [61%] vs. 33/38 [87], P = .02). Progression-free survival was worse in the NCA cohort (5-year progression-free survival, 0.70 vs. 1.00; P = .011, by log-rank test). CONCLUSIONS: Compared with GAs, NCAs are more invasive at the time of presentation and have a more aggressive clinical course. This study provides evidence that NCAs represent a distinct clinicopathologic entity with behavior that differs adversely from that of GAs. This may inform clinical decision-making, including frequency of postoperative tumor surveillance and timing of adjunctive treatments.

Accuracy in Deep Brain Stimulation Electrode Placement: A Single-Surgeon Retrospective Analysis of Sterotactic Error in Overlapping and Non-Overlapping Surgical Cases.

BACKGROUND: Many surgeons utilize assistants to perform procedures in more than one operating room at a given time using a practice known as overlapping surgery. Debate has continued as to whether overlapping surgery improves the efficiency and access to care or risks patient safety and outcomes. OBJECTIVE: To examine effects of overlapping surgery in deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement disorders. METHODS: In this retrospective analysis of overlapping and non-overlapping cases, we evaluated stereotactic accuracy, operative duration, length of hospital stay, and the presence of hemorrhage, wound-related complications, and hardware-related complications requiring revision in adults with movement disorders undergoing DBS. RESULTS: Of 324 cases, 141 (43.5%) were overlapping and 183 (56.5%) non-overlapping. Stereotactic error, number of brain penetrations, and postoperative length of hospitalization did not differ significantly (p ≥ 0.08) between the overlapping and non-overlapping groups. Mean operative duration was significantly longer for overlapping (81/141 [57.4%], 189.5 ± 10.8 min) than for non-overlapping cases (79/183 [43.2%], 169.9 ± 7.6 min; p = 0.004). There were no differences in rates of wound-related complications or hemorrhages, but overlapping cases had a significantly higher rate of hardware-related complications requiring revision (7/141 [5.0%] vs. 0/183 [0%]; p = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Overlapping and non-overlapping cases had comparable DBS lead placement accuracy. Overlapping cases had a longer operative duration and had a higher rate of hardware-related complications requiring revision.

Contralateral interhemispheric, transfalcine approach with asleep motor mapping for parasagittal lesions near the medial precentral gyrus.

The contralateral interhemispheric approach has several advantages for approaching parasagittal lesions, including lesions involving or approaching the medial precentral gyrus. Supplementing the interhemispheric approach with asleep motor mapping is useful for confirming the location of the corticospinal tracts from the contralateral transfalcine corridor and identifying subcortical motor fibers at the deep aspect of the resection cavity. The authors describe the contralateral interhemispheric, transfalcine approach with asleep motor mapping to resect a parasagittal metastatic lesion involving the medial precentral gyrus. The video can be found here: https://youtu.be/L-fJ6m5kOWs .

Patient out-of-pocket spending in cranial neurosurgery: single-institution analysis of 6569 consecutive cases and literature review.

OBJECTIVE With drastic changes to the health insurance market, patient cost sharing has significantly increased in recent years. However, the patient financial burden, or out-of-pocket (OOP) costs, for surgical procedures is poorly understood. The goal of this study was to analyze patient OOP spending in cranial neurosurgery and identify drivers of OOP spending growth. METHODS For 6569 consecutive patients who underwent cranial neurosurgery from 2013 to 2016 at the authors' institution, the authors created univariate and multivariate mixed-effects models to investigate the effect of patient demographic and clinical factors on patient OOP spending. The authors examined OOP payments stratified into 10 subsets of case categories and created a generalized linear model to study the growth of OOP spending over time. RESULTS In the multivariate model, case categories (craniotomy for pain, tumor, and vascular lesions), commercial insurance, and out-of-network plans were significant predictors of higher OOP payments for patients (all p < 0.05). Patient spending varied substantially across procedure types, with patients undergoing craniotomy for pain ($1151 ± $209) having the highest mean OOP payments. On average, commercially insured patients spent nearly twice as much in OOP payments as the overall population. From 2013 to 2016, the mean patient OOP spending increased 17%, from $598 to $698 per patient encounter. Commercially insured patients experienced more significant growth in OOP spending, with a cumulative rate of growth of 42% ($991 in 2013 to $1403 in 2016). CONCLUSIONS Even after controlling for inflation, case-mix differences, and partial fiscal periods, OOP spending for cranial neurosurgery patients significantly increased from 2013 to 2016. The mean OOP spending for commercially insured neurosurgical patients exceeded $1400 in 2016, with an average annual growth rate of 13%. As patient cost sharing in health insurance plans becomes more prevalent, patients and providers must consider the potential financial burden for patients receiving specialized neurosurgical care.

Functional and genomic context in pathway analysis of GWAS data.

Gene set analysis (GSA) is a promising tool for uncovering the polygenic effects associated with complex diseases. However, the available techniques reflect a wide variety of hypotheses about how genetic effects interact to contribute to disease susceptibility. The lack of consensus about the best way to perform GSA has led to confusion in the field and has made it difficult to compare results across methods. A clear understanding of the various choices made during GSA - such as how gene sets are defined, how single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are assigned to genes, and how individual SNP-level effects are aggregated to produce gene- or pathway-level effects - will improve the interpretability and comparability of results across methods and studies. In this review we provide an overview of the various data sources used to construct gene sets and the statistical methods used to test for gene set association, as well as provide guidelines for ensuring the comparability of results.

Pathway analysis in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: An ensemble approach.

Despite a wealth of evidence for the role of genetics in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), specific and definitive genetic mechanisms have not been identified. Pathway analyses, a subset of gene-set analyses, extend the knowledge gained from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) by providing functional context for genetic associations. However, there are numerous methods for association testing of gene sets and no real consensus regarding the best approach. The present study applied six pathway analysis methods to identify pathways associated with ADHD in two GWAS datasets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Methods that utilize genotypes to model pathway-level effects identified more replicable pathway associations than methods using summary statistics. In addition, pathways implicated by more than one method were significantly more likely to replicate. A number of brain-relevant pathways, such as RhoA signaling, glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis, fibroblast growth factor receptor activity, and pathways containing potassium channel genes, were nominally significant by multiple methods in both datasets. These results support previous hypotheses about the role of regulation of neurotransmitter release, neurite outgrowth and axon guidance in contributing to the ADHD phenotype and suggest the value of cross-method convergence in evaluating pathway analysis results. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Exposure to ionizing radiation during liver transplantation evaluation, waitlist time, and in the postoperative period: a cause for concern.

UNLABELLED: Substantial evidence has linked ionizing radiation exposure (RE) to oncogenesis. Patients evaluated for transplantation undergo extensive diagnostic imaging and have increased baseline cancer risk factors. The objective was to examine exposure in a cohort of patients undergoing evaluation and liver transplantation. Radiation exposure from all diagnostic examinations and procedures were retrospectively recorded. Radiation exposure is reported in mSv, a standardized measure of the detrimental biologic effect of radiation which allows for population-level comparisons. Seventy-four patients (69% male, mean 57 years) were evaluated, of which 13 of 35 subsequently listed patients were transplanted; an additional 18 previously evaluated patients were also transplanted during 2010. The most common indications were hepatitis C (55%) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (30%). The median observation period was 14 months. In all, 1,826 imaging examinations were performed, of which 408 (22%) involved considerable ionizing radiation and were the focus of investigation. Median annualized effective RE was 51 mSv (interquartile range [IQR]: 19,126), with 10% exposed to almost twice the amount of radiation recommended for a 5-year period. Patients with HCC received significantly (P < 0.00001) higher median annualized effective RE than patients without HCC, 137 mSv (IQR: 87,259) versus 32 mSv (IQR: 13,57), respectively. Computed tomography (CT) abdomen (23%) and chest (16%) accounted for the most common exposures, with CT abdomen accounting for 46% of overall cohort RE. CONCLUSION: Patients undergoing evaluation and liver transplantation at our center are exposed to very high levels of ionizing radiation. Although long-term effects in these patients are yet to be defined, the theoretical increased risk of malignancy must be given its due consideration. Routine use of nonradiation imaging and reconsideration of indications may be preferred and justified in this population.

Gene set analysis: A step-by-step guide.

To maximize the potential of genome-wide association studies, many researchers are performing secondary analyses to identify sets of genes jointly associated with the trait of interest. Although methods for gene-set analyses (GSA), also called pathway analyses, have been around for more than a decade, the field is still evolving. There are numerous algorithms available for testing the cumulative effect of multiple SNPs, yet no real consensus in the field about the best way to perform a GSA. This paper provides an overview of the factors that can affect the results of a GSA, the lessons learned from past studies, and suggestions for how to make analysis choices that are most appropriate for different types of data. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Laser scanning confocal endomicroscopy in the neurosurgical operating room: a review and discussion of future applications.

Laser scanning confocal endomicroscopy (LSCE) is an emerging technology for examining brain neoplasms in vivo. While great advances have been made in macroscopic fluorescence in recent years, the ability to perform confocal microscopy in vivo expands the potential of fluorescent tumor labeling, can improve intraoperative tissue diagnosis, and provides real-time guidance for tumor resection intraoperatively. In this review, the authors highlight the technical aspects of confocal endomicroscopy and fluorophores relevant to the neurosurgeon, provide a comprehensive summary of LSCE in animal and human neurosurgical studies to date, and discuss the future directions and potential for LSCE in neurosurgery.

Label-free microscopic assessment of glioblastoma biopsy specimens prior to biobanking [corrected].

Glioblastoma is the most common primary brain tumor with a median 12- to 15-month patient survival. Improving patient survival involves better understanding the biological mechanisms of glioblastoma tumorigenesis and seeking targeted molecular therapies. Central to furthering these advances is the collection and storage of surgical biopsies (biobanking) for research. This paper addresses an imaging modality, confocal reflectance microscopy (CRM), for safely screening glioblastoma biopsy samples prior to biobanking to increase the quality of tissue provided for research and clinical trials. These data indicate that CRM can immediately identify cellularity of tissue biopsies from animal models of glioblastoma. When screening fresh human biopsy samples, CRM can differentiate a cellular glioblastoma biopsy from a necrotic biopsy without altering DNA, RNA, or protein expression of sampled tissue. These data illustrate CRM's potential for rapidly and safely screening clinical biopsy samples prior to biobanking, which demonstrates its potential as an effective screening technique that can improve the quality of tissue biobanked for patients with glioblastoma.

Landmine Injury Resulting in Comminuted Lumbar Facet Fracture as a Cause of Lumbar Stenosis and Spondylolisthesis.

Lumbar facet fractures are rarely reported and have been linked to sports and spine surgery. We describe the case of a 77-year-old patient who sustained an injury from multiple landmine blasts during the Vietnam War. He had low back pain since that time, which was initially managed conservatively. However, the pain progressed over decades to severe neurogenic claudication that greatly restricted his quality of life. Neuroimaging revealed the presence of bone fragments impinging on the spinal canal at the L5/6 level (transitional anatomy) that resulted from a comminuted fracture of the lumbar facet at the inferior articular process. We performed an L5/6 decompressive laminectomy, with removal of these fragments, and posterior instrumented fusion, with substantial improvement in symptoms. This case illustrates a unique mechanism of lumbar facet fracture and the biomechanic origination, natural history, and optimal treatment of this entity. We expand on the spectrum of lumbosacral injuries associated with the combat blast injury that have only increased in prevalence in recent conflicts.

Neurosurgical Residency Training at Veterans Affairs Medical Centers, the Resident Perspective.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Department of Veteran's Affairs (VA) Medical Centers play a crucial role in training neurosurgery residents. Although previous studies have examined the impact of VA rotations from the attending perspective, the resident experience remains unexplored. We present a national survey of neurosurgery residents to assess their perceptions of VA rotations, focusing on operative experience, call burden, longitudinal patient care experiences, and overall strengths and limitations. METHODS: A 33-question survey was distributed by email to all neurosurgery residents who had previously completed a VA rotation within the past 7 years. RESULTS: Responses were received from 77 residents, representing 36 out of 40 neurosurgical residency programs with an active VA rotation. Most residents (79.2%) found their VA rotations adequate in length, having spent a median of 5 months at the VA. Residents completed an average of 11.7 (SD 7.2) cases per month while at the VA, including 8.9 (SD 5.5) spine, 1.7 (SD 2.0) cranial, and 1.4 (SD 1.6) peripheral nerve cases. Many residents reported completing a greater proportion of spine and peripheral nerve cases at the VA compared with their primary clinical sites. Across all postgraduate years, residents felt that the VA offered increased operative autonomy (79.0% agreement) at the expense of total operative volume (98.7% agreement) and complexity (81.9% agreement). Importantly, 94.8% of residents participated in longitudinal patient care experiences, and 59.7% followed all patients longitudinally. CONCLUSION: The resident experience at the VA varies, presenting both strengths and limitations. Addressing these factors could enhance the overall effectiveness of VA rotations in neurosurgical training programs in the future.