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.

# # #

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Key to the riddle of sleep may be linked to bacteria

2025-09-24

What causes us to sleep? The answer may lie not only in our brains, but in their complex interplay with the micro-organisms spawned in our intestines. New research from Washington State University suggests a new paradigm in understanding sleep, demonstrating that a substance in the mesh-like walls of bacteria, known as peptidoglycan, is naturally present in the brains of mice and closely aligned with the sleep cycle. Those findings serve to update a broader hypothesis that has been in development at WSU for years—proposing that sleep arises from communication between the body’s sleep regulatory systems and the multitude of microbes living inside us. “This ...

FAU study pinpoints single drug therapy for PTSD, pain, and alcohol misuse

2025-09-24

About 12 million adults in the United States are affected by PTSD, impacting between 4% and 8% of the adult population – and up to 30% of military personnel and veterans. Strikingly, 63% of veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder also suffer from alcohol use disorder (AUD) and/or chronic pain. These conditions frequently overlap, with individuals who have AUD or chronic pain often also experiencing PTSD. When these disorders co-occur, they tend to worsen one another, making effective treatment significantly more challenging. Currently, no approved ...

Predictive lab test for cardiac events still rare but increasing

2025-09-24

Researchers from University of California San Diego School of Medicine have found that testing for lipoprotein(a) — a genetic risk factor for heart disease — remains uncommon in the United States, despite modest increases over the past decade. The findings were published on Sept. 26, 2025 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Advances. Lipoprotein(a) — or Lp(a) — is a type of cholesterol particle in the blood. Elevated levels are strongly linked to a higher risk of heart attack, stroke and aortic valve disease. Roughly 20% of the U.S. population has elevated Lp(a), yet testing rates have historically been low. In the ...

Report: Cardiovascular diseases caused 1 in 3 global deaths in 2023

2025-09-24

WASHINGTON (September 24, 2025) — Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) remain the leading cause of disease burden , causing one in three deaths worldwide as a result of population growth, population aging and exposure to a broad range of risks, including increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, according to the latest Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study special report published today in JACC, the flagship journal of the American College of Cardiology. “This research provides countries with ...

3D-printed tissue brings new realism to medical training

2025-09-24

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (09/24/2025) — Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have successfully 3D printed lifelike human tissue structures that can be used for medical training for surgeons and doctors. The study was recently published in Science Advances, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Previous methods have made stiff, simple tissues, but this new technique can mimic the complex, directional strength and stretchiness found in real tissues like skin or other organs. In this paper, the researchers discovered a method to control the shape and size of the tiny ...

A promising treatment for leishmaniasis found in Okinawan marine sponges

2025-09-24

Leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease prevalent across 90 countries, affects approximately 12 million people worldwide, with 350 million more at risk of infection. Caused by unicellular parasites known as Leishmania protozoa, the disease commonly manifests as skin sores that can develop into deep ulcers. Beyond the physical damage to the skin, leishmaniasis can leave permanent scars on patients’ faces, hands, and feet, often leading to social stigma and psychological trauma. Unfortunately, the disease predominantly strikes poor communities, where medical care is often out of reach. While various treatments for leishmaniasis do exist, they face severe limitations. Current drugs, ...

From mosasaurs to snakes and lizards, “megafilters” shape reptile fossil collections

2025-09-24

For the more than 242 million years that lizards and snakes appear in the fossil record, they show up as mostly pieces of lizard jaws and snake vertebrae. Exactly why these parts survive as fossils has been a mystery—until now. In a new study published in Paleobiology, Dr. Hank Woolley from the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur Institute looks at the entire history of squamates (the reptile group that includes lizards, snakes, and mosasaurs among others) to understand why only certain parts show up—the bias of the record—and to quantify that bias for the first time. ...

Pairing up for health care visits helps most older adults who have tried it, poll finds

2025-09-24

The visitor chairs in America’s health care clinics are getting put to good use, according to a new poll of older adults. In the last year, 38% of people age 50 and over said another adult attended at least one of their health care appointments, including 4% who said someone attended a telehealth appointment with them. And 34% have accompanied another person over 50 to at least one appointment, including 4% who attended another older adult’s telehealth visit, according to new findings from the University of Michigan National Poll on Healthy Aging. The vast majority of these older adults said ...

Piecing together the puzzle of future solar cell materials

2025-09-24

Global electricity use is increasing rapidly and must be addressed sustainably. Developing new materials could give us much more efficient solar cell materials than at present; materials so thin and flexible that they could encase anything from mobile phones or entire buildings. Using computer simulation and machine learning, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now taken an important step towards understanding and handling halide perovskites, among the most promising but notoriously enigmatic materials. Electricity use is constantly increasing ...

Supercritical subsurface fluids open a window into the world

2025-09-24

Researchers including those from the University of Tokyo build on past studies and introduce new methods to explore the nature and role of subsurface fluids including water in the instances and behaviors of earthquakes and volcanoes. Their study suggests that water, even heavy rainfall, can play a role in or even trigger seismic events. This could potentially lead to better early warning systems. The study improves models of seismic activity and can even help identify optimal sites for drilling to tap sources of supercritical geothermal energy. As far ...

New data release offers unprecedented look at early childhood brain development

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: