CentileBrain: A Normative Modeling Framework for Brain Health and Disease
openNIMH - National Institute of Mental Health
ABSTRACT
With this proposal we launch the "ENIGMA CentileBrain: A Normative Modeling Framework for Brain Health and
Disease," an international initiative spearheaded by the ENIGMA Consortium. The absence of a standardized
normative reference values for neuroimaging phenotypes is a major limitation in brain research in contrast to all
other medical fields where biological measures (such as blood glucose or pressure) are assessed against
established norms. This proposal addresses this gap by leveraging empirically validated normative models
derived from geographically and ethnoracially diverse MRI datasets, covering brain morphology, white matter
microstructure, and resting-state functional connectivity. This comprehensive approach includes cross-sectional
and longitudinal multimodal neuroimaging data from over 50,000 healthy controls, multimodal neuroimaging data
and polygenic risk scores from five major psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive
disorder, post-traumatic stress disorders and substance use disorder), and novel polygenic predictors of brain
phenotypes developed by ENIGMA-Genetics group. Our aims are to: (1) establish and disseminate CentileBrain
as the largest public access platform of normative models of multimodal neuroimaging measures; (2) quantify
the influence of genetic and non-genetic features (i.e., body mass index, cognition, socioeconomic status) on
normative models of brain morphometry, white matter microstructure, and resting-state connectivity; and (3) map
multivariate deviations from normative reference values within and across the five major psychiatric disorders.
This study addresses NIMH funding priorities to characterize age-related changes across the lifespan in diverse
populations and identify biomarkers of mental illness across the lifespan.
Up to $655K
health research