The Aging Brain Cohort (ABC) repository: The University of South Carolina’s multimodal lifespan database for studying the relationship between the brain, cognition, genetics and behavior in healthy aging

This paper describes the public repository that houses multimodal data collected as part of Aging Brain Cohort study being conducted at the University of South Carolina (ABC@UofSC). Ultimately, the ABC@UofSC Repository will contain diverse data from cross sectional (N ​= ​800, age ​= ​20-80) and longitudinal (N ​= ​200, age ​= ​60-80, interesting interval ​= ​4 years) samples of healthy South Carolinians which include socio demographic data, raw and preprocessed functional (resting-state and task based fMRI, ASL) and structural (T1, T2 FLAIR, DWI, SWI) MRI data, raw and preprocessed resting-state EEG, comprehensive blood work, measures of physical and sensory function, genetic data derived from whole blood and buccal swabs, and results from a unique constellation of social, emotional, cognitive and language measures. Currently, data has been collected from 65 participants (ages 60-80) in the longitudinal arm of the project. The ABC@UofSC Repository is unique in its broad range of measures, choice of state-of-the art MRI sequences, inclusion of complex language discourse measures, and demographic diversity. Data from the ABC@UofSC Repository are easily accessible upon request (abc.sc.edu), and our publicly available statistics and visualization tools provide collaborating researchers with the ability to identify associations between brain structure and function in relation to genetic variation and behavioral measures across the adult life-span with unprecedented ease and rapidity.