The Developing Children’s Connectome Project (DCCP)

The Developing Children’s Connectome Project (DCCP) will establish a fundamental understanding of brain, cognitive and socio-emotional development by acquiring, in unprecedented detail, neuroimaging, cognitive, behavioural and socio-environmental data from a large cohort of children aged 6 to 12 years, that were already deeply phenotyped during fetal, neonatal and toddler stages as part of the Developing Human Connectome Project (dHCP). We will elucidate, at the individual level, how socio-environmental and clinical factors influence children’s longitudinal brain maturation, shaping resilience to known risks (i.e., perinatal events, psychiatric family history, socio-economic circumstances) and/or susceptibility to mental health problems, as they enter and progress through school. This new information will provide clinically meaningful evidence to guide well-being strategies supporting the development of all children. Overarching goals: to create the most comprehensive ultra-high field neuroimaging dataset to date spanning age 6 to 12 (n=548 children) (Aim 1) and explore dynamic associations between changes in brain structure/function and phenotypic heterogeneity (Aim 2); to study how perinatal brain features inform later brain trajectories into middle childhood (Aim 3); to precisely model, at the individual level, the factors defining differences in mental health vulnerability in childhood (Aim 4).