Summary: A study on the health of the brain of a decade has published its full data set, offering rare longitudinal information on how cognition and brain structure change in adulthood. The study on the brain of Dallas Lifespan followed nearly 500 individuals aged 21 to 89 on three points of time using brain analyzes, cognitive tests and health surveys.
The results emphasize that aging follows various neurological paths, without unique cause behind the cognitive decline. Free access data allows researchers from around the world to explore the biology of healthy aging and early decline more deep than ever.
Key facts:
Source: Ut dallas
Researchers from the University of Texas of Dallas Center for Vital Longevity (CVL) have published the full data set of a decade project designed to follow the health of the brain and cognitive as people age and distinguish paths neurologically healthy from those who indicate a probability of decrease.
The study on the brain of Dallas’s lifespan (DLBS) combined brain and cognition measures during adulthood, including a wide range of imaging and three -point tests in nearly 500 lives of healthy peoples.
An article published on May 26 Nature scientific data Provides an overview of the project and describes its meaning, which includes the data collected from 2008 to 2020.
Dr. Drenise Park, president of the university distinguished in behavioral and brain sciences and research director at CVL, is the origin of the project. She said that we can consider the brain as an orchestra playing, with different parts becoming important in different phases of a composition.
“This repository allows us to see the brain at the same time,” said Park.
“The release of these data will allow the exploration and characterization of how the brain changes in many different facets as we age. You can learn one thing from the white substance, another of gray matter and another from the activation of neurons. ”
Dr. Gagan Wig, co-rating author of the article and associate professor of psychology at the school of behavioral and brain sciences, said: “We used this set of data to study the trajectories of aging in adulthood, including the average age, which has been sub-studied.
“The DLBS allowed us to identify the individual characteristics which predict cognitive decline and disease.”
The DLBS was launched with a method to extend research in Time (Merit) Award (R37) to park from the National Institute of Aging (NIA), which is one of the National Institutes of Health, which has provided long -term funding, in this case for 10 years.
This allowed the team to devote their time entirely to collect data without the need to publish results in an early time.
The DLBs estimated 464 initial participants from 21 to 89 years old; 338 returned for a second assessment three to five years later, and 224 underwent a third data collection after another similar interval.
“Having three points of time is a rarity among studies on brain aging in adulthood,” said Wig.
“So often, studies on aging are based on transversal comparisons of younger and older people, not looking at the same individuals followed over time. Longitudinal tests are essential to understand how and why individuals age as they do. ”
Each assessment included a complete neuropsychological battery; questionnaires evaluating physical and neurological health; A wide range of imaging sweeping, including structural and functional MRIs; And the measurements of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain via positrons emotional scanners (TEP).
WIG said that the study was innovative in its inclusion of middle age participants, the early adoption of brain scanners which allowed the measurement of cerebral networks and its collection of TEP data from a normal cognitively sample.
Important results from DLBS data include demonstrations of the degradation of the brain network which are obvious through the lifespan and descriptions of the presence of high amyloid levels in healthy adults, discoveries which were then verified in additional research.
“Finding healthy adults who had an amyloid burden was the first clue that the amyloid may not be sufficient for cognitive impairment,” Wig said.
“Since then, certain efforts to eliminate the amyloid from the brain have succeeded, but there have been mixed results in terms of deterrent cognitive decline.”
Researchers now believe that the amyloid is a precipitating factor for the aggregation of TAU tangles, which are an additional signature of Alzheimer’s disease. The most recent DLB wave contains data that allows researchers to examine the tau in the brain.
“The availability of these precious data allows scientists to assess and refine the dominant models of disease and cognitive aging,” said Wig.
The park considers the causes of cognitive decline as parts in a puzzle that can be different for everyone.
“Some people have a strongly degraded white substance that causes problems. Others have problems with activation or narrowing of the brain. Not two people are not alike, “she said.
“We cannot indicate a single model. But we are moving towards the possibility of understanding why some people are declining, and we learn more about the potential causes.”
Free access data provides researchers with the possibility of testing the brain hypotheses and cognition in adulthood.
Although the CVL and other scientists have already published in depth on the basis of this data, Park said that these publications have only scratched the surface in terms of what this information can reveal on cognitive neuroscience of aging.
“The publication of our open standard will allow data to be more widely accessible in communities of neuroscience, medical and psychological.
“Beyond cognition measures, the data set also contains a large number of surveys and instruments measuring health indicators, behavior and a specific personality in individuals in adulthood,” said Wig.
“Our team plans to continue to exploit this set of data for years while we are trying to understand the individual trajectories of cognitive health, and we are delighted that others do it more easily.”
While Park was approaching her retirement this year, she faced an important choice: to devote several years to the preparation of the volumes of data to share with the world, or to focus on pursuing articles according to the data.
“I decided that the best use of my time was to invest in this discipline by sharing data with the world,” she said.
“I am very proud of the fact that we have finished it elegantly. The data is very easy to use for people if it comes with a hypothesis. I consider this to be a more important contribution to science. ”
Park said that she hoped that the inheritance of the repository will be to provide the field of neuroscience with more questions to explore and the means to explore them.
“I feel justified. I spent a decade of my career in this project, and I feared that I perhaps continue something that would not be really important, “she said.
“The data appearing in this publication will continue to have an impact, to ask questions to be resolved – and I am sure they will do it.”
The other authors affiliated with UT Dallas include psychology teachers Dr. Kristen Kennedy and Dr. Karen Rodrigue; Former CVL researcher, Dr. Joseph P. Hennessee; CVL Research Associate Evan T. Smith Ms’15, Phd’21; and CVL Research Scientist Micaela Chan Ms’12, Phd’16. The additional authors were from the UT Southwestern Medical Center, the Harvard Medical School, the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Stony Brook University, the Johns Hopkins Medicine School and the Icahn School of Medicine of Mount Sinai.
Funding: This work was supported by the NIA 5R37AG-006265-27 and RC1G036199 subsidies.
Author: Stephen Fontenot
Source: Ut dallas
Contact: Stephen Fontenot – Ut Dallas
Picture: The image is credited with Neuroscience News
Original search: Open access.
“”The study of the brain of Dallas’s lifespan: a complete set of adult lifespan data of the brain and cognitive agingBy Denise Park et al. Scientific data
Abstract
The study of the brain of Dallas’s lifespan: a complete set of adult lifespan data of the brain and cognitive aging
The study of the brain of Dallas’s lifespan (DLBS) was designed to integrate the brain and cognition through adult life. Participants (n = 464) were between 21 and 89 years old at the time of the first evaluation and returned approximately every 3.5 to 5 years for a second (n = 338) and the third era (n = 224) of data collection.
The three eras included a complete neuropsychological battery, questionnaires that evaluated physical health, psychosocial status and brain health, structural MRI analyzes (including t1 -weighted imagery and weighted imagery by diffusion), a hypercapnia scan, an arterial spin marking analysis and four functional FMR heels.
In addition, amyloid and tau measurements have been collected with AV-45 (Florbetapir) and AV-1451 (Flortucipipir). Key innovations were a robust sampling of the middle age participants and the inclusion of TEP data for the amyloid and the tau in a normal cognitively sample.
This large set of data has recently been published on Openuro.org open access and offers researchers the opportunity to test many hypotheses on the brain and cognition through human age, including longitudinal hypotheses, with this data over a multi -year period.
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