Brain Imaging and Development Trajectories in Childhood Onset Psychiatric and Endocrine Disorders

Study Description: This natural history protocol will have participants come to the NIH for brain imaging, psychological/psychiatric testing, and genetic characterization. Our core hypotheses are that many of the most severe neuropsychiatric disorders of childhood onset are associated with deviations from the path of normal brain development, the neuroanatomical substrates of which can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging. Objectives: Primary Objectives: The long-term objectives of the protocol are to (1) map the neuroanatomic and neurophysiological trajectories of brain development; and (2) discern the influences, for good or ill, on those trajectories from demographic clinical, genetic, and environmental factors. Approximately half of the participants in our sample are typically developing. Clinical populations in our sample include participants with a variety of brain-based disorders, such as Autism, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, Childhood Onset Schizophrenia, Dyslexia, Sydenham s Chorea, and Tourette s Syndrome. Secondary Objectives: To characterize the relationships among measures of behavior and cognition as well as amongst multimodal measures of brain organization. Endpoints: Primary Endpoint: T1-weighted structural neuroimaging data which enable us to characterize how a range of anatomical brain phenotypes vary as a function of age, sex, behavioral/cognitive traits, diagnostic status and genotype. Secondary Endpoints: Data analyses also consider how these factors relate to other outcomes of interest including; gene expression levels, functional metrics from in vivo neuroimaging, and questionnaire/interview-based assessment of clinical features.