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 crucial to our understanding of normative variation in 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 develops. Using state-of-the art HCP imaging approaches will allow investigators to push our currently limited understanding of normative brain development to new levels. This knowledge will critically inform prevention and intervention efforts targeting well known public health concerns (e.g., neurological and psychiatric disorders, poverty). The majority of developmental connectivity studies to date have used fairly coarse resolution, have not been multi-modal in nature, and few studies have used comparable methods to assess individuals across a sufficiently wide age range to truly capture developmental processes (e.g., early childhood through adolescence). Here we propose a consortium of five sites (Harvard, Oxford, UCLA, University of Minnesota, Washington University), with extensive complimentary expertise in brain imaging and neural development, including many of the investigators from the adult and pilot lifespan HCP efforts. Our synergistic integration of advances from the HARVARD-MGH and WU-MINN-OXFORD HCPs with cutting edge expertise in child and adolescent brain development will enable major advances in our understanding of the normative development of human brain connectivity. The resultant unique resource will provide rich, multimodal data on several biological and cognitive constructs that are of critical importance to health and well-being across this age range and allow a wide range of investigators in the community to gain new insights about brain development and connectivity.
Aim 1 will be to optimize existing HCP Lifespan Pilot project protocols on the widely available Prisma platform to respect practical constraints in studying healthy children and adolescents over a wide age range and will also collect a matched set of data on the original Skyra and proposed Prisma HCP protocols to serve as a linchpin between the past and present efforts.
Aim 2 will be to collect 1500 high quality neuroimaging and associated behavioral datasets on healthy children and adolescents in the age range of 5-21, using matched protocols across sites, enabling robust characterization of age-related changes in network properties including connectivity, network integrity, response properties during tasks, and behavior.
Aim 3 will be to collect and analyze longitudinal subsamples, task, and phenotypic measures that constitute intensive sub-studies of inflection points of health-relevant behavioral changes within specific developmental phases.
Aim 4 will capitalize on our success in sharing data in the HCP, and use established tools, platforms and procedures to make all data publically available through the Connectome Coordinating Facility (CCF).
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 develops and changes during childhood. We propose to acquire, analyze, and publicly share 1500 high quality neuroimaging and associated behavioral datasets on neurotypical children and adolescents in the age range of 5-21 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.
| Harms, Michael P; Somerville, Leah H; Ances, Beau M et al. (2018) Extending the Human Connectome Project across ages: Imaging protocols for the Lifespan Development and Aging projects. Neuroimage 183:972-984 |
| Somerville, Leah H; Bookheimer, Susan Y; Buckner, Randy L et al. (2018) The Lifespan Human Connectome Project in Development: A large-scale study of brain connectivity development in 5-21 year olds. Neuroimage 183:456-468 |
| Barch, Deanna M (2017) Resting-State Functional Connectivity in the Human Connectome Project: Current Status and Relevance to Understanding Psychopathology. Harv Rev Psychiatry 25:209-217 |
