Clinical Research Tools


 
NIH Toolbox for Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function
A Blueprint-Funded Resource
Fact Sheet: pdf   html
  • There is little uniformity among measures used to assess quality of life in patients with neurological disease, making it difficult to compare or compile data across studies.
  • The toolbox will be a comprehensive set of measures for assessing cognition, emotion, sensation and motor functions, with an emphasis on those measures useful for studying epidemiology, prevention and long-term intervention.

NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development
A Blueprint-Funded Resource
Fact Sheet: pdf   html
  • An ongoing contracted study to develop a database of MRI and correlated clinical/behavioral data from ~ 500 healthy, typically developing children, ages newborn to late adolescence/early adulthood.  Imaging modalities include structural MRI, spectroscopy and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).
  • Will enable the study of normal brain development, provide a control database for studies of childhood psychiatric, developmental and neurological disorders, and may lead to new imaging tools.  Blueprint funds expanded the DTI portion of the project.
  • For more information, see the news release NIH Study Tracks Brain Development in Some 500 Children across U.S., or the study's public outreach site.

FNIH Biomarkers Consortium
  • A partnership among the Foundation for NIH (FNIH), government agencies and the private sector, formed to accelerate the development of biomarkers -- non-symptomatic changes in the body that indicate a disease process or risk of disease.
  • Researchers seeking assistance with biomarker development for brain disorders may apply to the Consortium's Neuroscience Steering Committee for financial and technical support.