The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study: A Comprehensive Adult Lifespan Data Set of Brain and Cognitive Aging

The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study (DLBS) was designed to integrate brain and cognition across the adult lifespan. Participants (n = 464) were between age 21 and 89 years at time of first assessment and returned approximately every 3.5–5 years for a second (n = 338) and third epoch (n = 224) of data collection. The three epochs included a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, questionnaires that assessed physical health, psychosocial status, and brain health, structural MRI scans (including T1-weighted imaging and diffusion-weighted imaging), a hypercapnia scan, an arterial spin labeling scan, and four functional fMRI scans. Additionally, measures of amyloid and tau were collected with AV-45 (Florbetapir) and AV-1451 (Flortaucipir). Key innovations were robust sampling of middle-aged participants and inclusion of PET data for amyloid and tau in a cognitively normal sample. This large data set has recently been published on OpenNeuro.org open-access and provides the opportunity for researchers to test many hypotheses about brain and cognition across human adulthood, including longitudinal hypotheses, with these data across a multi-year span.