UW-Milwaukee joining childhood brain development study

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are joining what's being called the largest long-term study of childhood brain development and health in the United States.

UWM is one of 21 sites across the country that will recruit children ages 9 and 10 to study over the next decade as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study by the National Institutes of Health.

The study is expected to follow more than 10,000 children through the teen years and into early adulthood to gather an unprecedented amount of detailed information about a period when the brain changes dramatically and the risk is highest for substance abuse and other behavioral disorders to begin.

Scientists will use advanced brain imaging, interviews and behavioral testing to find answers to a number of questions about how childhood experiences influence brain development and social, emotional, intellectual and physical growth.

Questions like: How does screen time affect social and brain development? How do sleep patterns affect academic achievement?  What are the long-term effects of ADHD medications on academics and health? Can football injuries cause brain damage? How does tobacco or alcohol use affect learning and health?

Those questions have been studied in individual labs, but not over a decade by dozens of scientists collaborating at sites across the nation with support from federal and industry partners.

Krista Lisdahl, a UWM associate professor of psychology and principal investigator for the UWM site team, expects to recruit 270 students for the study from within a 20-mile radius of the Milwaukee County Research Park in Wauwatosa, where the local research is based. Several school districts already have agreed to help identify families that may be interested in participating, she said.

Lisdahl likened the potential breadth and depth of the ABCD Study to the Human Genome Project, an international project that gave scientists the ability to read nature's complete genetic blueprint for building a human being.

"The real power of this study is the number of kids and how nationally representative it will be," Lisdahl said, noting study participants will be balanced by gender and ethnicity similar to the U.S. Census. The study also is striving to recruit children from different socioeconomic statuses.

Annual brain imaging of study participants will be especially useful to researchers since many smaller studies use only interviews and surveys, Lisdahl said.

Scientists want to better understand biological and environmental building blocks that contribute to successful and resilient young adults.

Lisdahl said knowledge gleaned from the study could lead researchers to be able to predict potential developmental problems so they can be prevented or reversed. Interventions will not be part of this research because it is not a clinical trial.

Mental health will be among the facets studied.

"One of the goals is to look at bio-markers or risk factors for early development of mental health disorders that tend to have their onset in adolescence," Lisdahl said.

Lisdahl specializes in studying the impact of health behaviors such as physical activity and substance use on brain health during adolescence and young adulthood using methods that include brain scanning with magnetic resonance imaging. In 2012, she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Barack Obama and the NIH.

The research team for the ABCD study has 19 members, including three faculty members from UWM, three from the Medical College of Wisconsin, five graduate students and a postdoctoral student, plus staff and a consultant. Faculty from the Medical College will oversee the brain imaging.

Elementary schools will be approached on a rolling schedule throughout the next 20 months, and ABCD Study recruitment fliers will be sent home or through email. Some families also will be recruited through mailings to their home.

Families will participate at UWM once a year and will be paid for their time. Lisdahl said she knows some families will move over the next 10 years, but with 21 sites around the country, it's likely that study participants would remain within a four- or five-hour drive of a site for an annual visit.

"Seventy to 80% of kids born in Wisconsin stay in Wisconsin until young adulthood, so I'm not too concerned," she said.

For more information about the study, visit www.ABCDStudy.org. For more information about UWM’s involvement, see abcdstudy.org/sites/uwm.html. For a map of all the participating sites in the U.S., see www.abcdstudy.org/about.html.