The major technological and analytical advances in human brain imaging achieved as part of the Human Connectome Projects (HCP) enable examination of structural and functional brain connectivity at unprecedented levels of spatial and temporal resolution. This information is proving invaluable for enhancing our understanding of normative variation in young adult brain connectivity. It is now timely to use the tools and analytical approaches developed by the HCP to understand how structural and functional wiring of the brain changes during the aging process. Using state-of-the art HCP imaging approaches will allow investigators to push our currently limited understanding of normative brain aging to new levels. We propose an effort involving a consortium of five sites (Massachusetts General Hospital, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Minnesota, Washington University in St. Louis, and Oxford University), with extensive complementary expertise in human brain imaging and aging and including many investigators associated with the original adult and pilot lifespan HCP efforts. This synergistic integration of advances from the MGH and WU-MINN-OXFORD HCPs with cutting-edge expertise in aging provides an unprecedented opportunity to advance our understanding of the normative changes in human brain connectivity with aging.
Aim 1 will be to optimize existing HCP Lifespan Pilot project protocols to respect practical constraints in studying adults over a wide age range, including the very old (80+ years).
Aim 2 will be to collect high quality neuroimaging, behavioral, and other datasets on 1200 individuals in the age range of 36 - 100+ years, using matched protocols across sites. This will enable robust cross-sectional analyses of age-related changes in network properties including metrics of connectivity, network integrity, response properties during tasks, and behavior.
Aim 3 will be to collect and analyze longitudinal data on a subset of 300 individuals in three understudied and scientifically interesting groups: ages 36-44 (when late maturational and early aging processes may co-occur); ages 45-59 (perimenopausal, when rapid hormonal changes can affect cognition and the brain); and ages 80 - 100+ (the `very old', whose brains may reflect a `healthy survivor' state). The information gained relating to these important periods will enhance our understanding of how important phenomena such as hormonal changes affect the brain and will provide insights into factors that enable cognitively intact function into advanced aging.
Aim 4 will capitalize on our success in sharing data in the Human Connectome Project (HCP), and will use these established tools, platforms, and procedures to make this data publicly available through the Connectome Coordination Facility.
The major technological and analytical advances in adult human brain imaging achieved as part of the Human Connectome Projects (HCP) enable examination of structural and functional brain connectivity at unprecedented levels of spatial and temporal resolution. It is now timely to use the tools and analytical approaches developed by the HCP to elucidate how the structural and functional wiring of the brain changes during aging. We propose to acquire, analyze, and publicly share 1500 high quality neuroimaging and associated behavioral datasets on typical adults in the age range of 36 - 100+ years. These data will also be compared to existing HCP data from 1200 healthy young adults, generating a unique multi-project resource that provides rich, multimodal data on several biological and cognitive constructs that are of critical importance to understanding health and well-being across a broad age range.
