NIH Renews Big Data Study on Adolescent Cognitive Development

NIH is renewing its commitment to the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study for an additional seven years, allowing researchers to expand big data resources on brain development and child health.

The ABCD study is the largest long-term study of the adolescent brain ever conducted in the US. Launched in 2015, the ABCD follows 11,750 children, including 2,100 who are twins or triplets, for at least ten years starting at ages 9 or 10.

With nearly $290 million of new funding for seven years to research institutions across the country, NIH will continue to support the study’s Coordinating Center and Data Analysis Informatics & Resource Center at UC San Diego. NIH will also keep funding the study sites where children are assessed.

“The next phase of the ABCD study will help us understand the effects of substance use, as well as environmental, social, genetic, and other biological factors on the developing adolescent brain,” said NIDA Director Nora D. Volkow, MD.

“Since the participants are now in their vulnerable middle school years or are beginning high school, this is a critical time to learn more about what enhances or disrupts a young person’s life trajectory.”

Researchers on the ABCD study are documenting exposures to drugs – including nicotine, marijuana, and alcohol – screen time activities, sleep patterns, engagement in sports and arts, and other variables that may impact brain development, cognitive skills, and mental health.

Participants undergo interviews and behavioral assessments once or twice a year, as well as physiological measures of cardiovascular health and neuroimaging of brain function every two years.

The study aims to answer long-held questions about the development of the teenage brain through adolescence and beyond. NIH has already released two datasets from the study to the greater research community via the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Data Archive.

The institute released the first dataset in February 2018, which included basic participant demographics, physical and mental health assessments, neurocognition data, and pubertal hormone analyses.

The dataset is disaggregated by sex, racial or ethnic group, and socioeconomic status, allowing researchers to address numerous questions that may inform health decisions and policies related to education, nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and prevention of substance use and mental illness.

“By sharing this interim baseline dataset with researchers now, the ABCD study is enabling scientists to begin analyzing and publishing novel research on the developing adolescent brain,” said Nora D. Volkow, MD, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

So far, research teams have published 32 papers using this data, including eleven from investigators not involved in the ABCD study. These research papers have led to a better understanding of the association between certain traits and experiences in adolescence, and brain physiology and other outcomes, such as cognitive ability and mental illness.

While most of these research projects have only looked at associations at a single point in time, data collected over time will enable scientists to examine the developmental trajectories of individuals and how they are affected by a plethora of factors, including genetics.

This summer, NIH will release additional data that includes the six-month and one-year follow up for the full cohort and other interim data. The data will be available through the NIMH Data Archive, which researchers can access through a free NIMH Data Archive account.

“Sharing ABCD data and other related datasets with the research community, in an infrastructure that allows easy query, data access, and cloud computation, will help us understand many aspects of health and human development.” Joshua A. Gordon, MD, PhD, director of NIMH, said at the time the first dataset was released.

“These datasets provide extraordinary opportunities for computational neuroscientists to address problems with direct public health relevance.”