Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context

Abstract

The endeavor to understand the human brain has seen more progress in the last few decades than in the previous two millennia. Still, our understanding of how the human brain relates to behavior in the real world and how this link is modulated by biological, social, and environmental factors is limited. To address this, we designed the Healthy Brain Study (HBS), an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, cohort study based on multidimensional, dynamic assessments in both the laboratory and the real world. Here, we describe the rationale and design of the currently ongoing HBS. The HBS is examining a population-based sample of 1,000 healthy participants (age 30–39) who are thoroughly studied across an entire year. Data are collected through cognitive, affective, behavioral, and physiological testing, neuroimaging, bio-sampling, questionnaires, ecological momentary assessment, and real-world assessments using wearable devices. These data will become an accessible resource for the scientific community enabling the next step in understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context. An access procedure to the collected data and bio-samples is in place and published on https://www.healthybrainstudy.nl/en/data-and-methods/access. Trail registration: https://www.trialregister.nl/trial/7955.

Sensory processing sensitivity is associated with neural synchrony and functional connectivity during threatening movies

“…Demographic, SPS, and MRI data were collected from participants as part of the ongoing Healthy Brain Study, a longitudinal population-based project acquiring data from healthy people aged 30-39 years (Healthy Brain Study consortium et al, 2021). Participants were recruited from the general population in Nijmegen, the Netherlands.…”

“…Participants were assessed at three times over the course of one year: assessment 1 (A1), four months later (assessment 2; A2), and another four months later (assessment 3; A3) ( Figure 1 ). A full description of the study design is available in (Healthy Brain Study consortium et al, 2021).…”

“…In this study, we combined naturalistic IS-RSA, activation, and ISFC to characterize the underlying neural mechanisms of SPS dimensionality more fully. We analyzed cross-sectional SPS questionnaire and m-fMRI data from 238 participants from the Healthy Brain Study, a large, well-characterized healthy adult population-based sample (Healthy Brain Study consortium et al, 2021). First, we aimed to investigate the association between neural ISC and SPS dimension score similarity during each movie-viewing condition, and to subsequently test whether any significant association differed in threat versus neutral conditions.…”

Citizen neuroscience: Wearable technology and open software to study the human brain in its natural habitat

“…Recently, several research groups started to perform home studies with wearable EEG systems (e.g., Debellemaniere et al, 2018; Esfahani, Weber, et al, 2023; Healthy Brain Study consortium et al, 2021; Lustenberger et al, 2022; Talamini et al, in preparation; Ter Avest et al, 2023; Xi et al, 2023). However, the majority of home studies, including the aforementioned ones, still recruit participants using conventional methods.…”

“…Therefore, some studies have questioned the quality and reliability of data collected by citizen scientists and scrutinized their role in scientific research (Aceves-Bueno et al, 2017;Meschini et al, 2021;Resnik, Elliott, & Miller, 2015;Riesch & Potter, 2014). For example, citizen science projects are suggested to be at higher risk of data fabrication, result falsification, tempering, participation bias, plagiarism, or partial data presentation or analysis (Gilbert & Denison, 2003;Haklay, 2016). Furthermore, the involvement between the citizen neuroscientists and nonprofit, private, or political organizations (or personal relationships with the study subjects) may raise a conflict of interest (COI) in the study (Resnik, 2007;Resnik, Elliott, & Miller, 2015).…”