The Lifespan Human Connectome Project in Aging: An overview

Susan Y Bookheimer; David H Salat; Melissa Terpstra; Beau M Ances; Deanna M Barch; Randy L Buckner; Gregory C Burgess; Sandra W Curtiss; Mirella Diaz-Santos; Jennifer Stine Elam; Bruce Fischl; Douglas N Greve; Hannah A Hagy; Michael P Harms; Olivia M Hatch; Trey Hedden; Cynthia Hodge; Kevin C Japardi; Taylor P Kuhn; Timothy K Ly; Stephen M Smith; Leah H Somerville; Kâmil Uğurbil; Andre van der Kouwe; David Van Essen; Roger P Woods; Essa Yacoub

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.10.009

The Lifespan Human Connectome Project in Aging: An overview

Neuroimage. 2019 Jan 15:185:335-348. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.10.009. Epub 2018 Oct 15.

Authors

Susan Y Bookheimer¹, David H Salat², Melissa Terpstra³, Beau M Ances⁴, Deanna M Barch⁵, Randy L Buckner⁶, Gregory C Burgess⁷, Sandra W Curtiss⁸, Mirella Diaz-Santos⁹, Jennifer Stine Elam⁸, Bruce Fischl¹⁰, Douglas N Greve², Hannah A Hagy³, Michael P Harms⁷, Olivia M Hatch², Trey Hedden², Cynthia Hodge⁷, Kevin C Japardi⁹, Taylor P Kuhn⁹, Timothy K Ly⁹, Stephen M Smith¹¹, Leah H Somerville¹², Kâmil Uğurbil³, Andre van der Kouwe², David Van Essen⁸, Roger P Woods¹³, Essa Yacoub³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Electronic address: sbook@ucla.edu.
² Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
³ Center for Magnetic Resonance Research Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA.
⁵ Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA; Department of Radiology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
⁶ Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Harvard University Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
⁷ Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
⁸ Department of Neuroscience, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
⁹ Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
¹⁰ Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, USA.
¹¹ Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging - Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB), Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
¹² Harvard University Department of Psychology and Center for Brain Science, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹³ Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

Abstract

The original Human Connectome Project yielded a rich data set on structural and functional connectivity in a large sample of healthy young adults using improved methods of data acquisition, analysis, and sharing. More recent efforts are extending this approach to include infants, children, older adults, and brain disorders. This paper introduces and describes the Human Connectome Project in Aging (HCP-A), which is currently recruiting 1200 + healthy adults aged 36 to 100+, with a subset of 600 + participants returning for longitudinal assessment. Four acquisition sites using matched Siemens Prisma 3T MRI scanners with centralized quality control and data analysis are enrolling participants. Data are acquired across multimodal imaging and behavioral domains with a focus on factors known to be altered in advanced aging. MRI acquisitions include structural (whole brain and high resolution hippocampal) plus multiband resting state functional (rfMRI), task fMRI (tfMRI), diffusion MRI (dMRI), and arterial spin labeling (ASL). Behavioral characterization includes cognitive (such as processing speed and episodic memory), psychiatric, metabolic, and socioeconomic measures as well as assessment of systemic health (with a focus on menopause via hormonal assays). This dataset will provide a unique resource for examining how brain organization and connectivity changes across typical aging, and how these differences relate to key characteristics of aging including alterations in hormonal status and declining memory and general cognition. A primary goal of the HCP-A is to make these data freely available to the scientific community, supported by the Connectome Coordination Facility (CCF) platform for data quality assurance, preprocessing and basic analysis, and shared via the NIMH Data Archive (NDA). Here we provide the rationale for our study design and sufficient details of the resource for scientists to plan future analyses of these data. A companion paper describes the related Human Connectome Project in Development (HCP-D, Somerville et al., 2018), and the image acquisition protocol common to both studies (Harms et al., 2018).

Keywords: Brain; Connectivity; Connectomics; Diffusion imaging; Functional connectivity; MRI; Morphometry; Neuroimaging; fMRI.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Adult
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Aging*
Brain* / anatomy & histology
Brain* / physiology
Connectome / methods*
Female
Humans
Longevity*
Male
Middle Aged
Models, Neurological
Multimodal Imaging
Nerve Net* / anatomy & histology
Nerve Net* / physiology
Neuroimaging / methods
Research Design

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding