Study of Brain Function Across the Lifespan

The aims of this study are threefold: 1. To use human neuroimaging techniques to characterize the neural bases of fundamental cognitive processes, 2. To measure individual differences in neural circuitry underlying these processes and their implications for behavior and clinical features, and 3. To develop a data acquisition and analysis pipeline that optimally and comprehensively characterizes these differences and uses them to predict measures of behavioral and clinical significance. To these ends, we have carefully selected a set of tasks that will serve as cognitive stress tests, taxing subjects along orthogonal cognitive dimensions in order to most effectively capture meaningful individual differences. By including children, adolescents, and adults, with both healthy controls and patients with mental health diagnoses in all three age groups, we will probe the full spectrum of function on each dimension and will, consistent with the framework of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC; Insel et al., 2010), elucidate the development and mature organization of neural circuitry underlying core cognitive functions, evaluate which of these circuits break in disease and how they do so, and relate individual differences in these circuits to differences in observable behavior.

Participants must be:

• be 8 years or older 
• be fluent English speakers 
• not have metal in their bodies 
• not be claustrophobic 
• not have a serious head injury