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Founding members of the BrainHealth Network convene in a sunlit corner of Center for BrainHealth during BrainHealth Week 2026. The groundbreaking research collaborative will enable data sharing to accelerate discovery.

Center for BrainHealth Forms Groundbreaking Research Collaborative to Enable Data Sharing, Accelerate Discovery

Center for BrainHealth

Founding members of the BrainHealth Network held inaugural meeting during BrainHealth Week 2026.Center for BrainHealth has formed a groundbreaking collaborative research initiative – the BrainHealth Network – connecting researchers across the country to understand brain health improvement through advanced MRI imaging and data analysis from one of the most comprehensive multimodal brain imaging datasets ever assembled. The Network leverages The BrainHealth Project, a longitudinal study launched in 2020 that will collect the world’s largest brain health data set from 100,000 healthy participants over 10 years, including a large cohort undergoing semiannual functional brain imaging.

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“While traditional clinical studies focus on detecting deficits, this data set is distinctive in its focus on measuring and optimizing the brain in a healthy state,” said Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD, founder and chief director of Center for BrainHealth and co-leader of The BrainHealth Project. “Thanks to the vast scale and longitudinal design of The BrainHealth Project, its sensitive measure of brain gain or loss, intervention-based approach, and the integration of diverse data types, Network researchers can move beyond correlation to identify causal relationships in brain health.”

A Comprehensive Data Set

The imaging data, gathered from approximately 1,200 MRI scans and rapidly growing, includes structural, functional, vascular and white matter tract imaging. The data assesses both neural (e.g., brain activity, connectivity) and vascular (e.g., blood flow, oxygenation) health, offering a holistic view of brain function.The BrainHealth Network also leverages data from the BrainHealth Index, a metric designed to track brain health over time. The Index offers a composite score with a unique focus on the brain’s lifelong ability to improve, built with a proprietary algorithm from 22 established assessments. Enhanced by imaging and physiological data, this scientifically informed approach highlights the contributing factors of brain health. Paired with predictive modeling capabilities, the Index offers a remarkable opportunity to create personalized interventions. Unlike other large data sets that are typically just observational, The BrainHealth Project also collects data to measure effectiveness of cognitive training interventions, allowing researchers to explore causal insights regarding changes in brain health.

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“To my knowledge, no single study has comprehensively measured all of these imaging metrics at once in a single cohort,” said Mark D’Esposito, MD, co-leader of The BrainHealth Project and distinguished professor at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, UC Berkeley. “Even the largest NIH-funded projects usually include only a subset of these metrics rather than capturing the full range in a single data set.”

A Unique Approach to Sharing

The Network’s infrastructure enables multi-institutional collaboration, with each member specializing in different imaging techniques and exploring diverse questions. A centralized database supports continuous data integration, as well as a systemic way to share. Collaboration is ongoing and reciprocal — labs can explore their own research questions using the shared dataset. Data collection is streamlined through BrainForge, a cloud-native platform that automates imaging processing and supports scalable, real-time data integration. Collaborating labs use shared data to conduct independent research, fostering reciprocal innovation and transparency.

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“The BrainHealth Network was designed with deep, bi-directional sharing as its goal, and this is supported by the data and processing infrastructure. There are not many precedents for this level of collaboration in science, but this is what it will take to achieve precision health for the most complex structure in the universe – the brain,” added Dr. D’Esposito.
Initial work has already brought about new tools – such as novel imaging and cognitive metrics – that will benefit all the Network members.

Pioneering Researchers Join the Effort

This initiative is powered by a cross-disciplinary approach that ensures continuous improvement, rapid integration of new discoveries and shared commitment to advancing the science of brain health. The Network involves multiple labs across universities and other organizations, each analyzing a unique aspect of the data:
  • Mark D’Esposito, MD UC Berkeley and Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas Network co-director
  • Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas Network co-director
  • Matthew Walker, PhD and Eti Ben-Simon, PhD Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas Sleep Reimagined
  • Meredith Braskie, PhD University of Southern California MRI Lag and Perfusion Analyses
  • Vince Calhoun, PhD Center for Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science (TReNDS) and Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas Powering the Executive Brain: White Matter Pathways
  • Lori Cook, PhD, CCC-SLP Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas Three Years of Data from The BrainHealth Projec
  • Wesley Clapp, PhD and Brain Miller, PhD NeuroScouting Multimodal Brain-Body Monitoring
  • Iftach Dolev, PhD QuantalX Neuroscience Charting Individual Neural Activity Age: Profile of the Brain's Health Status
  • Robyn Honea, PhD University of Kansas School of Medicine Decoding the Neural Architecture of Brain Vitality
  • Susanne Jaeggi, PhD and Aaron Seitz, PhD Northeastern University Precision Tools to Augment the BrainHealth Index
  • Kevin Weiner, PhD UC Berkeley Scalable precision imaging of evolutionarily-new brain structure
  • Nina Miolane, PhD UC Santa Barbara AI-Generated Digital TWIN Brain to Catapult Precision Brain Health
  • Ioaniss Pappas, PhD Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Associations Among Vascular Risk Factors, Functional Connectivity, and BrainHealth Index
  • Jeff Spence, PhD Center for BrainHealth at UT Dallas Linking Hemodynamics with Measures of Brain Health: a Precision Approach
  • Aaron Tate Center for BrainHealth, UT Dallas Accessible Digital Platform to Inspire Data-driven Cognitive Wellness
  • Michelle Voss, PhD The University of Iowa Heart Health Meets Brain Health: Benefits of Keeping Fit
The Network members held their first meeting during BrainHealth Week in February to share progress and preliminary findings, with multiple research publications expected in coming months.

Future Vision

Leveraging an expanding brain health data set, the BrainHealth Network is accelerating data analysis and promoting discoveries to benefit society, human health, transparency, reproducibility and innovation. Its ultimate goal is to create predictive models that can inform personalized interventions and make brain health tracking as accessible and routine as monitoring nutrition, heart rate or sleep.For more information and to join the BrainHealth Network, visit https://centerforbrainhealth.org/science/brainhealth-network

About Center for BrainHealth

Center for BrainHealth®, part of The University of Texas at Dallas, is a nonprofit translational research institute committed to enhancing, preserving and restoring brain health across the lifespan. Major research areas include the use of functional and structural neuroimaging techniques to better understand the neurobiology supporting cognition and emotion in health and disease. This leading-edge scientific exploration is translated quickly into practical innovations to improve how people think, work and live, empowering people of all ages to unlock their potential through optimal brain performance. Translational innovations leverage 1) the BrainHealth Index, a proprietary measure that uniquely charts one’s upward (or downward) holistic brain health trajectory; and 2) Strategic Memory Advanced Reasoning Tactics (SMART™), a strategy-based methodology developed and tested by BrainHealth researchers and other teams over three decades.

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Sandi Chapman, Founder and Chief Director, Center for BrainHealth, Co-Leader, The BrainHealth Project, Dee Wyly Distinguished Professor

Sandra Bond Chapman, PhD

Chief Director Dee Wyly Distinguished Professor, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences Co-Leader, The BrainHealth Project

Dr. Mark D'Esposito is a distinguished professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and the Carol Heller BrainHealth Project Co-Leader.

Mark D’Esposito, MD

Co-Leader, The BrainHealth Project

Sleep expert Matt Walker, PhD.

Matthew Walker, PhD

Professor of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering Director, Sleep Innovation Laboratories

Photograph of neuroscientist Eti Ben Simon, PhD at Center for BrainHealth in Dallas, Texas, with a luminous glass sculpture of human neurons in the background.

Eti Ben Simon, PhD

Research Assistant Professor Associate Director, Sleep Innovation Laboratories

Vince Calhoun in a striped blue dress shirt, portrait. Jane and Bud Smith Chair

Vince Calhoun, PhD

Jane and Bud Smith Chair

Lori Cook in a blue blouse with blue lights, portrait. Director of Clinical Research, BrainHealth Research; Head of Research, The BrainHealth Project; Adjunct Assistant Professor, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Lori Cook, PhD, CCC-SLP

Director of Clinical Research Head of Research, The BrainHealth Project Adjunct Assistant Professor, School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Headshot of Jeffrey S. Spence, PhD

Jeffrey S. Spence, PhD

Director of Biostatistics

Aaron Tate, Director of Emerging Technology at Center for BrainHealth.

Aaron Tate

Director of Emerging Technology

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