Rationale
Cognitive function is critical to all aspects of human life, spanning school, work, independent living, social relations and construction of personal narratives. Optimization of cognitive function is of enormous personal and societal importance. Cognitive function cannot be understood without integration of societal and historical knowledge, the environments we operate in, but is also a product of the brain and our genes. However, contemporary approaches to explain cognitive function typically do not adequately consider how relationships between genes, brain and cognition are dynamic and reflect impacts from the environment and the society. AHeadForLife will integrate these perspectives into a unified research program involving psychologists, sociologists and economists, geneticists, physicists and brain researchers.
Objectives and methods
We will investigate how immediate environmental and societal factors interact with genes and the brain to affect cognition throughout life. Four levels of data are utilized, spanning population registries, new longitudinal collection of digital cognitive and health data for a representative sample of 100.000, in person-assessments with brain scans, genotyping, clinical and cognitive data for 8.000, and experimental intervention for 500 individuals.
The ambition is to identify causal levers that raise and sustain cognition, informing policies that can reduce social inequities and identifying behaviors that can improve human welfare. We will identify environmental factors driving the dynamic relationships between genes, brain and cognitive function, timing of these influences, and how factors interact to determine cognitive function through life.
In-person assessments-Family sampling
Participants in longitudinal studies from the wider areas of Oslo and Trondheim and their family members will be recruited to undergo in-person extensive cognitive testing, MRI and somatic assessments. In total, we have done cognitive and MRI examinations of 2327 participants between 4 and 90 years at first test who have consented to be asked to participate in new longitudinal follow-up examinations. 1345 of these have already been examined between one and four times after baseline, covering up to 12 years since the first visit. This sample provides a great opportunity to assess trajectories of cognitive and brain development and aging. However, we have up to now excluded siblings and other family members. AHeadForLife will examine the complete sample, this time also recruiting siblings (full-, half-, step-), children and parents of the participants. This way we aim to recruit 2000 existing participants and 4000 family members.The outcome will be a novel conceptualization of how brain and cognition across the lifespan result from interactions between larger societal, immediate environmental, and genetic factors.
Publications
Status of the project
Recruitment of participants has started in November 2023 and is currently ongoing.
Funding
The project has received funding from the Norwegian Research Council under grant nr. 325001 "AHeadForLife - Societal and environmental determinants of brain and cognition" and the UiO LifeScience Convergence Environment III 2022-2026.