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Study Overview
Changes in brain structure and function are a normal part of the aging process from middle age through older adulthood. In the last decade, an explosion of work has focused on brain structure in disorders that occur as we age. Yet, relatively few studies have focused on healthy aging of brain circuitry and how it varies across people.
Thanks to recent technological advances pioneered by the Human Connectome Project study of healthy young adults, we can now explore how the brain typically ages and how connections change in mature and older adults. Data collected will be shared broadly so that researchers can learn as much as possible from it for years to come. Characterizing brain aging in healthy adults will also allow us to better understand differences in people with conditions that may affect brain wiring such as dementia or major depression.
Ultimately, the HCP-A Study aims to collect information that we, our families, and health professionals can use to enhance our well being as we age.
How To Participate
The Lifespan Human Connectome Project Aging (HCP-A) Study will enroll 1,500+ healthy adults ages 36-100+ to discover how individual experiences affect the ways in which different parts of the brain are connected and how these connections (the “connectome”) change across healthy adulthood. To learn how to participate, go to our Recruitment Page.
Principal Investigators
Current Data Releases
HCP-Aging Lifespan 2.0 Release Released on 02/26/2021
Lifespan HCP Release 2.0 includes cross-sectional visit 1 (V1) preprocessed structural and functional imaging data, unprocessed V1 imaging data for all included modalities (structural, high-res hippocampal T2, resting state fMRI, task fMRI, diffusion, and ASL), and non-imaging demographic and behavioral assessment data from 725 HCP-Aging (HCP-A, ages 36-100+) healthy participants (22+ TB of data).
What’s new in the Lifespan 2.0 release?
- Preprocessed rfMRI and tfMRI data available for ALL release subjects
- Processed sMRI and fMRI data in modality- and processing output-specific "HCP package" datasets
- HCP packages cater to different analysis purposes can be used as filters on the Lifespan 2.0 NDA Query page to create custom download packages
- Most users should access Preprocessed Recommended data that have been cleaned of spatially specific structured noise and precisely aligned across subjects by multimodal cortical surface registration (MSMAll)
- HCP packages cater to different analysis purposes can be used as filters on the Lifespan 2.0 NDA Query page to create custom download packages
- Behavioral and biomeasure data available for all released subjects, including NIH Toolbox measures for most subjects.
Get Access and Download the data: Get started with the Data Access and Download Instructions for navigating NDA and using it's download tools. We've also created a wiki that details setup for downloading data via NDA's command line tools.
Want more information? Check out our updated documentation to help with understanding the file structure and interpreting the data.
View Data Release Documentation
Release Date: Feb 26, 2021