New data release offers unprecedented look at early childhood brain development

Data from national study offers a detailed look at human brain development, starting before birth

2025-09-24

(Press-News.org) Researchers at University of California San Diego, part of the national HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study Consortium, have announced the first data release from this landmark study, providing scientists around the world with new ways to answer critical questions about human brain development in early childhood. This inaugural data release includes comprehensive biomedical and behavioral data from more than 1,400 pregnant women and their children, collected across three early developmental stages from birth through nine months of age.

"This data release is a game-changer," said Christina Chambers, Ph.D., co-director of the HBCD Study Administrative Core and professor in the Department of Pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine. The HBCD Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is the largest longitudinal study of early brain and child development in the U.S. and includes 27 sites across the country anchored by both an Administrative Core and a Data Core.

HBCD data were released in collaboration with colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Minnesota, and the J. Craig Venter Institute and hosted by the new NIH Brain Development Cohorts (NBDC) Data Hub. The NBDC Data Hub also hosts data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive DevelopmentSM Study (ABCD Study®), funded by the NIH and coordinated through UC San Diego.

“Researchers in child development and neuroscience now have at their fingertips rich, longitudinal brain, behavioral and genomic data from these two pivotal studies, which will enable a new generation of breakthroughs in these fields,” added Chambers.

The HBCD data release includes various types of behavioral and biomedical data, including information on prenatal health and pregnancy exposures (including substance use and environmental exposures), social and environmental determinants of health, infant brain imaging and electroencephalogram (EEG) activity, cognitive, behavioral, and physical assessments, and wearable biosensor data.

“Data from these studies will fuel research around the world answering new questions about young people’s health and well-being that we, as study investigators, might never have conceived of,” added Charles A. Nelson III, Ph.D., co-director of the HBCD Study Administrative Core and professor of pediatrics and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School.

Learn about the NBDC Data Hub and its two supported studies: the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study and the HEALthy Brain and Child Development (HBCD) Study.

Research reported in this press release was supported by the National Institutes of Health under award numbers U01DA055352, U01DA055353, U01DA055366, U01DA055365, U01DA055362, U01DA055342, U01DA055360, U01DA055350, U01DA055338, U01DA055355, U01DA055363, U01DA055349, U01DA055361, U01DA055316, U01DA055344, U01DA055322, U01DA055369, U01DA055358, U01DA055371, U01DA055359, U01DA055354, U01DA055370, U01DA055347, U01DA055357, U01DA055367, U24DA055325, U24DA055330, U01DA041048, U01DA050989, U01DA051016, U01DA041022, U01DA051018, U01DA051037, U01DA050987, U01DA041174, U01DA041106, U01DA041117, U01DA041028, U01DA041134, U01DA050988, U01DA051039, U01DA041156, U01DA041025, U01DA041120, U01DA051038, U01DA041148, U01DA041093, U01DA041089, U24DA041123, & U24DA041147. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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New data release offers unprecedented look at early childhood brain development

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