The Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain Project, a longitudinal study of adolescent brain development

Abstract

We describe the Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain (QTAB) dataset and provide a detailed methodology and technical validation to facilitate data usage. The QTAB dataset comprises multimodal neuroimaging, as well as cognitive and mental health data collected in adolescent twins over two sessions (session 1: N = 422, age 9-14 years; session 2: N = 304, 10-16 years). The MRI protocol consisted of T1-weighted (MP2RAGE), T2-weighted, FLAIR, high-resolution TSE, SWI, resting-state fMRI, DWI, and ASL scans. Two fMRI tasks were added in session 2 to probe emotion-relevant neural processes (emotional conflict task) and evoke activity in the Theory of Mind network (passive movie watching task). Outside of the scanner, we assessed cognitive function using standardised tests. We also obtained self-reports of symptoms for anxiety and depression, perceived stress, sleepiness, pubertal development measures, and risk and protective factors. We additionally collected several biological samples for genomic and metagenomic analysis. The QTAB project was established to promote health-related research in adolescence.

Persistence of Anxiety/Depression Symptoms in Early Adolescence: A Prospective Study of Daily Life Stress, Rumination, and Daytime Sleepiness in a Genetically Informative Cohort

“…Long et al, 2020). In addition, families with higher socioeconomic status are somewhat over-represented in the QTAB cohort (Strike et al, 2022) and results may not best represent individuals in a low socioeconomic environment. Further, this work identifies a relatively small (though important) proportion of factors influencing individual variation in adolescent anxiety/depression symptoms.…”

“…The Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain (QTAB) cohort was recruited primarily through the Queensland Twin Registry (QTwin), but with additional twins recruited through Twins Research Australia and through a QTAB study website (Strike et al, 2022). All families, with young adolescent twins (or triplets), resided in south-east Queensland and were able to attend a brain imaging and data collection session at the Centre for Advanced Imaging, University of Queensland (for the 5 triplet sets, only 2 individuals per triplet set were imaged, and they are treated as twin pairs in all analyses).…”

Heritability of cerebellar subregion volumes in adolescent and young adult twins

“…Participants were from two independent and genetically informative studies—the Queensland Twin Imaging (QTIM) study of brain structure and function (de Zubicaray et al, 2008) and the Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain (QTAB) longitudinal brain development study (Strike et al, 2023). The pooled dataset comprised 1194 individuals (57% female) from 691 families, including 467 complete twin pairs (208 monozygotic [MZ] and 259 dizygotic [DZ]).…”

“…The QTAB study (Hansell, Strike, de Zubicaray, et al, 2022; O'Callaghan et al, 2021; Strike et al, 2023) focused on the period of late childhood/early adolescence, with brain imaging, cognition, mental health, and early life/family demographics data collected over two waves (wave 1: 9–14 years, wave 2: 10–16 years). The baseline QTAB wave includes imaging data for 211 families (422 individuals).…”