Clinical Core

this proposal aims to establish a multicenter SuperAging Consortium to identify behavioral, health, biologic, genetic, environmental, socioeconomic, psychosocial, anatomic and neuropathologic factors associated with SuperAging. These goals will be achieved through an organizational structure with 3 Cores (Administrative/Biostatistics, Clinical/Imaging, and Biospecimen/Neuropathology), which will enroll 500 participants through 5 Sites across the United States and Canada, with a focus on the enrollment of Black SuperAgers and Cognitively Average Elderly Controls with similar demographics and racial distribution (henceforth called Controls). The Consortium will build upon the strengths of exciting discoveries on the anatomy, biology and neuropsychology of SuperAgers identified through the Northwestern SuperAging Program, recruit an expanded cohort in order to consolidate preliminary results, launch new fields of inquiry, and expand the scope of the research with its emphasis on diverse enrollment. To this end, the Northwestern SuperAging Program will join efforts with recruitment Sites in Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Madison and Southwest Ontario, each of which was selected because of proven leadership and expertise in aging and dementia research, especially among minority communities. The SuperAging Consortium will leverage existing infrastructure at each of the Sites including NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centers, the Ontario Brain Institute, and the Northwestern SuperAging Project R01. In addition to the creation of a unique and uniform cohort that will be curated for intramural and extramural collaborations, the Consortium will also include two major Research Projects that will address entirely novel aspects of SuperAging through real-time measurements of psychophysiological parameters and the genetic characterization of immune mechanisms. The SuperAging Consortium leadership includes investigators with expertise in successful cognitive aging and dementia, behavioral neurology, neuropsychology, digital biomarkers, neuroimaging, neuropathology and diversity.