Approved Research

Identifying changes of the brain in healthy and pathological aging using multimodal data

Lay summary

With a rapidly aging population worldwide, understanding the brain in normal aging and aging-related disorders has attracted increasing attention for public health. While it is well known that various factors can alter our brain and lead to different paces of aging, our current knowledge is far from sufficiency to comprehensively understanding of aging. The UK biobank that provides multimodal data including neuroimaging, genetic, demographic, environmental, and others makes it possible to probe the widespread changes of the brain in normal and a range of neurodegenerative disorders, and examine the underlying associations of such changes and different factors. However, the huge amount of data generated from different modalities imposes new challenges on data analysis.

In this project, we aim to develop novel models for multimodality data analysis to examine the structural, functional, topographic, and connectivity changes of the brain associated with normal aging and aging-related disorders individually and at the group level. We are interested to investigate the joint factors contributing to aging and estimate the representative features for a range of aging-related disorders. This project is potential to deepen our understanding of the brain, help us develop early interventions of aging-related decline, and promote the healthy aging. The project is expected to last a minimum of 36 months with possible renewal in the future.