The National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence (N-CANDA) proposes a longitudinal study of developmental trajectories of brain structure, function, and physiology and their alteration by adolescent alcoho exposure. The prospective design will assess young people before the start of any significant substance use, thereby facilitating identification of antecedent conditions influencing the development of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) and the effects thereafter. A synergistic program to assess dependent-variable domains (clinical, neuropsychological, physiological, brain structural and functional), quantified and tracked longitudinally will be combined across 4 collection sites to create a large and rich body of data. An accelerated longitudinal design allows for construction of trajectories over the entire adolescent age range and encompasses the period of brain structural and functional development during the vulnerable time of AUD emergence. The investigators of the N- CANDA Data Analysis, Integration, and Informatics Component will provide fundamental neuroimaging science support for MRI pulse sequence development, acquisition, and analysis protocols. This component will also provide the infrastructure for deposition, organization, storage, archiving, retrieval, and initial analysis of neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and clinical data collected at all four N- CANDA acquisition sites.
The Specific Aims of the Data Analysis, Integration, and Informatics Component are to:
Aim 1. Develop procedures for collection of neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and clinical assessment data harmonized with existing large-scale neurodevelopmental research efforts.
Aim 2. Ensure that quality control measures are in place at each site for the acquisition of imaging data.
Aim 3. Develop the informatics infrastructure for data submission, database construction, data analysis, integration, and distribution for all N-CANDA sites through a query system that allows exploration of the multiple domains of the database.
Aim 4. Provide a pipeline for macrostructural, microstructural and functional neuroimage data processing and analysis.
Aim 5. Develop informatics processes to coordinate the combining of data and the analysis of results across and within research components for a priori hypothesis testing and association discovery and atheoretical data mining in search of relations not previously considered.
Because of the high prevalence of adolescent alcohol consumption, the National Consortium on Alcohol and NeuroDevelopment in Adolescence (N-CANDA) proposes a longitudinal study of a large group of adolescents before they begin excessive alcohol use. This component brings together all neuroimaging, neuropsychological, and clinical data collected at multiple sites for analysis and detection of the deleterious effectsof alcohol abuse on the development of the adolescent brain.
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