The BrainHealth Project Research Network is a groundbreaking collaborative research initiative focused on understanding brain health through advanced MRI imaging and data analysis. The project collects a comprehensive set of brain scans — including structural, functional, vascular and white matter tract imaging. This data is used to assess both neural and vascular health, offering a holistic view of brain function.
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To my knowledge, no single study has comprehensively measured all of these imaging metrics at once in a single cohort. Even the largest NIH-funded projects usually include only a subset of these metrics rather than capturing the full range in a single dataset.
Mark D’Esposito, MDCo-Leader, The BrainHealth Project, Center for BrainHealth, UT Dallas; Distinguished Professor, Dept. of Psychology, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute UC Berkeley
The uniqueness of this data set lies in its longitudinal design, intervention-based approach, and integration of diverse data types, enabling researchers to move beyond correlation to identify causal relationships in brain health. The ultimate goal is to create predictive models that can inform personalized interventions and make brain health tracking as accessible and routine as monitoring heart rate or sleep.
The collaboration involves multiple expert labs across universities and other organizations, each specializing in different imaging techniques. Each group analyzes the data and contributes to a centralized system using BrainForge, a cloud-enabled, web-based platform, which automates data processing.
The BrainHealth Project Research Network supports the ongoing development of 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 more than 20 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 BrainHealth Index offers a remarkable opportunity to create personalized interventions.
Leveraging an expanding data set, the BrainHealth Research Network accelerates data analysis – promoting discoveries to benefit society, human health, transparency, reproducibility and innovation. 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 BrainHealth Platform is the cutting-edge technology foundation empowering this large-scale brain health research. A secure, cloud-based environment, the platform connects different types of users (participants, researchers and coaches) in one integrated system, a product of ongoing collaboration between scientists, clinicians, technologists and industry partners.