陈明 编译
Jan. 3, 2018 , 5:15 PM
Combining results from 628 children's brains, this MRI scan shows regions activated as faces are viewed (yellow and orange) and other areas (blue and cyan) activated during a demanding working memory task.
628个儿童大脑核磁共振扫描的综合结果显示，在一项高难度的工作记忆任务中观察到了被激活脑区（黄色和橙色）以及其他区域（蓝色和青色）。
Chya (pronounced SHY-a), who is not quite 10 years old, recently spent an unusual day at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Part of the time she was in a "cool" brain scanner while playing video games designed to test her memory and other brain-related skills. At other points, she answered lots of questions about her life and health on an iPad.
还不满10岁的Chya刚刚在巴尔的摩马里兰大学医学院度过了不寻常的一天。这一天中的某些时刻，她在一个用来测试自己记忆力以及其他大脑技能的很“酷”的大脑扫描仪里玩电脑游戏。在另外一个地方，她在iPad上回答了很多关于她的生活和健康的问题。
A slender Baltimore third grader who likes drawing, hip hop, and playing with her pet Chihuahua, Chya is one of more than 6800 children now enrolled in an unprecedented examination of teenage brain development. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study—or ABCD Study—will complete its 2-year enrollment period in September, and this month will release a trove of data from 4500 early participants into a freely accessible, anonymized database. Ultimately, the study aims to follow 10,000 children for a decade as they grow from 9- and 10-year-olds into young adults.
Chya是巴尔的摩三年级的学生，她苗条，喜欢画画、街舞、喜欢和她的宠物奇瓦瓦玩，Chya是这项前所未有的青少年大脑发展测试的中的一位被试。青少年大脑认知发展研究（即ABCD研究）将在9月完成其两年的招生期，4500名早期参与者的一批数据将会于本月发布到一个可以免费访问的匿名数据库中。这项研究的最终目标是追踪10万个从9岁到10岁孩子10年成长的数据。
Supported by the first chunk of $300 million pledged by several institutes at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, teams at 21 sites around the United States are regularly using MRI machines to record the structure and activity of these young brains. They're also collecting reams of psychological, cognitive, and environmental data about each child, along with biological specimens such as their DNA. In addition to providing the first standardized benchmarks of healthy adolescent brain development, this information should allow scientists to probe how substance use, sports injuries, screen time, sleep habits, and other influences may affect—or be affected by—a maturing brain.
在马里兰州贝塞斯达的国立卫生研究院（NIH）提供的第一批3亿美元的资助下，分布在美国21个地点的研究小组定期使用MRI机器记录这些年轻大脑的结构和活动。他们还收集了每个孩子的心理，认知，和成长环境的大量数据，同时也收集了他们的生物标本，比如他们的DNA。除了提供健康青少年 大脑发展的第一个标准化的基准之外，这些信息还可以让科学家探索物质滥用、运动损伤、观看电子屏幕的时间、睡眠习惯，以及其他的情况如何潜在的影响了大脑的成长，或者大脑又是如何影响这些。
"A lot of studies in this area are plagued by the fact that we tend to capture teenagers after they have already started to misbehave in various ways. So, the fact that we are following kids from … before they engage in a lot of risk-taking behavior—it's going to be an incredibly rich data set," says clinical neuroscientist Monica Luciana of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, an ABCD Study site where she is a principal investigator (PI).
“这一领域的很多研究都困扰于以下的事实：我们倾向于在青少年已经开始出现各种不端行为之后拽住他们。所以，事实上，我们正在孩子们从事大量的冒险行为之前用就开始一直跟踪他们了。”明尼苏达大学的临床神经科学家Monica Luciana说，“这将是一个极为丰富的数据系统。”Monica Luciana是ABCD研究的某站点的首席研究员。
Clarifying the impacts of alcohol and drug use is a key goal for the study's leading funders: the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), both in Bethesda. "There is an urgency to try to address these questions," says NIDA Director Nora Volkow, the prime mover behind the study. The recent legalization of recreational marijuana in several states makes the study especially timely, she argues.
阐明酒精和药物滥用的影响是该研究主要投资者的一个关键目标：国家药物滥用研究所（NIDA）和国家酒精滥用和酒精中毒研究所（NIAAA）都在贝塞斯达。这项研究的主要推动者，NIDA的主任Nora Volkow说“有一种解决这些问题紧迫感”。她认为，最近几个州的大麻合法化使得这项研究特别适时。
http://imagen-europe.com/
Other studies have used MRI to follow teen brain development. Europe's IMAGEN enrolled 2000 14-year-olds and scanned them at intervals over the past decade. And NIAAA has been funding a study of alcohol's impacts, imaging the brains of more than 800 youths once a year for 4 years. But ABCD "is going to be by far the largest," Volkow says. "It's [also] longer-lasting, starts younger, and is much more comprehensive" in terms of testing.
其他的研究已经在使用核磁共振跟踪青少年的大脑发育了。欧洲的IMAGEN已经招募了2000名14岁的孩子，并在在过去的十年间对他们的大脑进行了定期的扫描。并且，NIAAA一直在资助酒精的影响，每年扫描800多名年轻人大脑一次，为期4年。但是，ABCD计划“将是迄今为止规模最大的研究”Volkow说，“这项研究（也）更持久，更年轻，而且在测试方面更为全面。”
Every 2 years, researchers will image the brain structures of Chya and other subjects, and record their neural activity as they perform tasks involving memory, rewards, and face recognition. Every year, the participants will have their height, weight, and waist measured, and answer questions designed to assess psychological symptoms. They will also be asked annually about environmental influences—things like family conflict and neighborhood crime.
研究人员每两年对Chya和其他被试的大脑结构进行成像，并且在他们执行记忆、奖励和人脸识别任务之时记录他们的神经活动。每年都会测量参与者的身高、体重和腰围，并回答旨在评估心理症状的问卷。每年也会询问他们的环境影响情况，比如家庭冲突和邻里犯罪。
The study aims to describe a normal trajectory of adolescent brain development—similar to the height and weight charts in pediatricians' offices—and use that to begin to answer the many chicken-and-egg questions that correlational studies can't. For instance, people who smoke marijuana heavily beginning in adolescence or young adulthood show markedly less connectivity between the neuronal axons of the hippocampus, a brain region important to long-term memory formation and learning, than do nonusers. But were the users' brains wired differently to begin with, leading them to smoke cannabis heavily? Or did the smoking cause the changes?
这项研究旨在描述青少年大脑发育的正常轨迹，类似于儿科医师办公室的身高和体重图，并用其回答那些相关研究无法解决的、类似于“先有鸡还是先有蛋”的问题。例如，从青春期或成年早期开始吸食大麻人的海马（长期记忆形成和学习的重要区域）神经轴突之间的连通性明显比非使用者少。但是，使用大麻者的大脑是否从一开始就不一样，所以导致他们大量吸食大麻？或者，这些变化是吸烟导致的？
"At age 9 and 10 you can get a nice clean baseline assessment on these kids," says Hugh Garavan, a neurobiologist who is the PI at the ABCD Study site at the University of Vermont (UVM) in Burlington. "Then, when someone develops psychosis at 16, we can go back and look at their brains and psychological assessments at 9, 10, 11, and 12. Were there markers of risk there?"
伯灵顿佛蒙特大学ABCD研究站的首席研究员，神经生物学家Hugh Garavan说：“你可以在这些孩子9岁和10岁的时候，对他们做一个很好的基准评估。”那么，当有人在16岁时出现精神病时，我们可以回头看看他们在9, 10, 11岁和12岁时的大脑和心理评估。在那些时候标记了风险么？”
Such markers, it's hoped, will ultimately allow much earlier diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of substance abuse, mental illness, and other conditions. A key strength of the study is that it will enroll enough children—including 800 pairs of twins—to answer questions that require large numbers of subjects, such as whether there are age windows when the brain is particularly vulnerable to use of a given drug.
人们希望这样的标记最终能够让人们更早地诊断、治疗或预防药物滥用、精神疾患以及其他的疾病。这项研究的一个关键优势是它可以通过招募足够多的儿童（包括800对双胞胎）来回答那些需要大量被试者的问题，例如，大脑对某种药物的使用是否有特别敏感的年龄窗口。
The study intends to reflect the United States's socioeconomic, geographical, racial, and ethnic diversity. Planners want the study pool to be 6% Asian-American, 16% black, and 24% Hispanic. As of early January, with 8 months left in recruitment, they are falling short on Asian-American and black enrollment, at 2% and 12%, respectively, but were close to meeting the Hispanic target, at 22%. And the "other" category, which includes mixed-race kids and Native Americans, accounts for fully 11% of enrollees, more than double the organizers' 5% target.
这项研究旨在反映美国的社会经济、地理、种族和民族的多样性。规划者希望在研究池中有6%的亚裔美国人，16%的黑人，24%的西班牙裔人。截至1月初，在招募开始了8个月之后，亚裔美国人和黑人登记人数分别为2%和12%，22%的拉美裔接近目标，而“其他”类别，包括混血儿和美国原住民，足足登记了11%人数，超过组织者设定的5%目标一倍多。
The ABCD Study crystallized at an inauspicious time. In May 2014, when its planners held their first meeting, the National Children's Study, an NIH effort to follow 100,000 children from the womb to age 21, was collapsing as a result of daunting logistics, overambitious objectives, and a projected cost of more than $3 billion. "We were very, very aware, because of the Children's Study, that we didn't want to load up the Christmas tree with too many ornaments," recalls George Koob, NIAAA director since 2014.
ABCD研究计划的成形遇上了一些不顺利的情况。在2014年5月，当它的规划者们举行第一次会议时，NIH的一项国家儿童研究试图跟踪10万名从子宫到21岁的孩子，由于后勤工作令人望而生畏，目标超出预期，以及超过预计的成本30亿美元而失败。NIAAA董事George Koob回忆说：“我们非常，非常清楚，因为这项儿童研究，我们不想在圣诞树上挂太多的饰品。”
By September 2016, under a tightly designed protocol dictated by the attention spans and wiggles of 9- and 10-year-old children, the ABCD Study was enrolling. The organizers are assuming 15% of the planned 11,500 enrollees will drop out over the decade, leaving the desired 10,000 participants. Some fear that may be optimistic, but Garavan is bullish. "Because it's a longitudinal study, we have to make sure the kids enjoy the experience," he says.
截至2016年9月，ABCD研究一直在招募9岁和10岁儿童的注意力持续时间和摆动的研究。组织者设想，11500名参与者在十年间会有15%的退出率，留下所剩的1w人。有些人担心这可能是乐观的，但Garavan乐观的说：“因为这是一个纵向研究，我们必须确保孩子们享受这种体验。”
Garavan has succeeded with at least one recruit. "You had to drool into two vials, not spit. And it was fun," recalls Afton, who had his brain scanned at UVM last September, a day before his 10th birthday. "Eventually they are going to learn how to track if someone has depression or something else, or not, by just looking at their brain in an MRI machine. I thought that was cool. And I wanted to help."
Garavan招募的一名新的被试，Afton回忆说：“你必须让水滴进两个瓶里，而不是吐进去。这很有趣，”去年9月，在他10岁生日的前一天，他在UVM扫描了他的大脑。“最终他们将学习如何通过核磁共振成像仪观察他们的大脑，以此跟踪某人是否患有抑郁症或其他疾患。我觉得很酷。而且我想帮忙。”
Chya, for her part, left the Baltimore study site last month with a picture of her brain and an ABCD T-shirt. She plans to return at the same time next year.
对于上个月离开巴尔的摩研究站的Chya来说，印在她T恤上的照片是她的大脑和ABCD研究站的合影。她计划明年同一时间回来。
*The ABCD Study keeps participants anonymous; the families of the kids in this article allowed the use of their first names.
* ABCD研究的参与者都是匿名的；本文中的孩子们允许使用他们的名字。
Posted in: Brain & Behavior 发表于《大脑与行为》
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