CARDIA Year 35 Brain MRI Renewal

CARDIA Year 35 Brain MRI ancillary proposal will leverage the rich longitudinal demographic, clinical and physiological data to study the long-term associations between vascular risk factors and brain structure and function across early to late midlife. The longitudinal imaging proposed will allow us the ability to better phenotype cognitive disorders and define early imaging signatures reflective of these phenotypes that get clustered in Alzheimer’s disease related dementias (ADRD) in late life. The third MRI for year 35 will be particularly valuable because the cohort will be in their late midlife when brain structural and functional changes accelerate and clinical manifestations can be linked to earlier and progressive structural changes. The Chicago CARDIA Filed Center will collect 180 MRI and cognitive measures in individuals with prior MRIs for the year 35 proposal and contribute to the sample size needed to explore these complex longitudinal associations across young adulthood to late midlife.