1/24 Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium - Project Summary/Abstract
Neurodevelopmental processes are shaped by dynamic interactions between genes and environments.
Maladaptive experiences early in life can alter developmental trajectories, leading to harmful and enduring
developmental sequelae. Pre- and postnatal hazards include maternal substance exposure, toxicant
exposures in pregnancy and early life, maternal health conditions, parental psychopathology, maltreatment,
structural racism, and excessive stress. To elucidate how various environmental hazards impact child
development, it is imperative that a normative template of developmental trajectories over the first 10 years of
life be established based on a sufficiently large and demographically diverse sample of the US population. To
accomplish this, the Healthy Brain and Child Development National Consortium (HBCD-NC) has been formed
to deploy a harmonized, optimized, and innovative set of neuroimaging (MRI, EEG) measures complemented
by an extensive battery of behavioral, physiological, and psychological tools, and biospecimens to understand
neurodevelopmental trajectories in a sample of 7,500 mothers and infants enrolled at 24 sites across the
United States (US). The HBCD-NC will carry out a common research protocol under direction of the HBCD-
NC Administrative Core (HCAC) and will assemble and distribute a comprehensive and well-curated research
dataset to the scientific community at large under the direction of the HBCD-NC Data Coordinating Center
(HDCC). The overarching goal of the HBCD-NC is to create a comprehensive, harmonized, and high-
dimensional dataset that will characterize typical neurodevelopmental trajectories in US children and that will
assess how biological and environmental exposures affect those trajectories. A special emphasis will be
placed on understanding the impact of pre- and postnatal exposure to opioids, marijuana, alcohol, tobacco
and/or other substances. To address these broad objectives, the sample of women enrolled will include: 1) a
racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse cohort that is representative of the US population; 2)
pregnant woman with use of targeted substances (opioids, marijuana, alcohol, tobacco); and 3)
demographically and behaviorally similar women without substance use in pregnancy to enable valid causal
inferences. In addition, the HBCD-NC will identify key developmental windows during which both harmful and
protective environments have the most influence on later neurodevelopmental outcomes. The large, multi-
modal, longitudinal, and generalizable dataset that will be produced for the first time by this study will provide
novel insights into child development using state-of-the-art methods. The HBCD-NC study will inform public
policy to improve the health and development of children across the nation.