DLBS
Dallas Lifespan Brain Study
Longitudinal adult lifespan study from Dallas of 464 cognitively healthy adults aged 21 to 89 at entry, with up to three waves of 3T MRI (T1w, FLAIR, DTI, ASL, task and resting fMRI), florbetapir and flortaucipir PET, in BIDS under CC0.
Overview
The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study follows cognitively healthy adults from their twenties to their late eighties to study how brain structure, function and Alzheimer's disease pathology relate to cognition across adulthood, with deliberate sampling of middle age. It was run by Denise Park's group at the University of Texas at Dallas with imaging at UT Southwestern Medical Center. The complete three-wave data set is on OpenNeuro as ds004856 under a CC0 waiver; an earlier subset of wave 1 had been shared through INDI under a non-commercial Creative Commons license.
Composition
464 adults aged 21 to 89 entered the study from 2008; 338 came back for a second wave and 224 for a third, roughly four to five years apart. About two thirds are women. The BIDS tree holds 969 imaging sessions. Each participant has an MPRAGE T1w, FLAIR, 30-direction DTI, pseudo-continuous ASL and BOLD runs for a scene encoding task, a semantic judgement task, a passive viewing task, rest and an optional hypercapnia challenge. 295 people have florbetapir amyloid PET and 154 have flortaucipir tau PET (tau from wave 2 on). The phenotype folder adds cognitive scores, surveys, APOE and other genotypes, FreeSurfer regional measures and PET SUVRs.
Acquisition
Waves 1 and 2 used one Philips Achieva 3T scanner and wave 3 a newer Achieva 3T with the same 8-channel head coil and protocol. Amyloid PET ran on a Siemens ECAT HR, tau PET at wave 2 on an ECAT HR+ PET/CT, and wave 3 PET partly or fully on a Siemens Biograph mCT. Images are raw conversions to NIfTI, defaced with PyDeface or mri_deface.
Annotations
There are no image labels. FreeSurfer 5.3 parcellations were manually edited and checked by a second team before the regional values were extracted; only those values are shared, not the full FreeSurfer outputs.
Known limitations
- Participants were screened for good health, right-handedness and an MMSE of at least 26. The sample is moderately well educated and 85% white at wave 1.
- A second cohort of 149 people aged 50 or older was added at wave 1 with different inclusion criteria.
- PET scanner changes between waves 2 and 3 led the authors to process SUVRs cross-sectionally.
- Subject-specific event timings of the words task were inaccurate; a study-wide timing file replaces them.
Cohort
Aggregate numbers from the sources below. Bars are relative to the 464 subjects.
Sex
- Female 287 62%
- Male 177 38%
Age
mean 58.31± 18.14 · range 21 to 89Age by sex
Reported cross table. Missing cells were not published (fewer than 10 subjects or not reported).
- 3380-8924
- 6070-7936
- 6260-6938
- 5050-5932
- 2740-4913
- 3030-3918
- 2520-2916
Contrast combinations
How many subjects have exactly each set of contrasts.
| T1w | FLAIR | dwi | bold | asl | Subjects with exactly this set |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
464 |
Modality
subjects
- MRI 464 100%
- PET 331 71%
Contrast / sequence
subjects, values can overlap
- T1-weighted 464 100%
- FLAIR 464 100%
- Diffusion-weighted 464 100%
- Arterial spin labeling 464 100%
- BOLD fMRI 464 100%
PET tracer
subjects
- [18F]florbetapir 295 64%
- [18F]flortaucipir 154 33%
Condition
subjects, values can overlap
- Healthy control 464 100%
License and access
Our reading of the license, not legal advice. Before you use the data, read the original license and confirm that your use is allowed. We take no responsibility for how you use a dataset. Full disclaimer
Download without an account
Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal
Public domain dedication. Do anything with the data, including commercial use, without asking and without having to give credit.
dataset_description.json and README of snapshot 1.3.0 state CC0. The older wave 1 subset on INDI is offered under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.
What you can do
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
What you can share
- Yes
- Yes
- Yes
What you must do
- No
- Share alike No
- No
- No
- Manuscript review No
- Release code No
- Return results No
- Delete after use No
Limits
- No
- Location limits No
Citation
Park DC, et al. The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study: A Comprehensive Adult Lifespan Data Set of Brain and Cognitive Aging. Scientific Data 12, 846 (2025). doi:10.1038/s41597-025-04847-7
All numbers
Every number on this page, as stored in stats.csv, with its source.
| Measure | Breakdown | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects | total epoch 1; participants.tsv also has 464 rows | 464 | park2025 Table 2 |
| Subjects | sex=female epoch 1; participants.tsv agrees | 287 | park2025 Table 2 |
| Subjects | sex=male epoch 1; participants.tsv agrees | 177 | park2025 Table 2 |
| Mean age | total age at epoch 1 | 58.3 | park2025 Table 2 |
| Age SD | total age at epoch 1 | 18.1 | park2025 Table 2 |
| Minimum age | total age at epoch 1 | 21 | park2025 Table 2 |
| Maximum age | total age at epoch 1 | 89 | park2025 Table 2 |
| Median age | total | 62 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | age=20-29 | 41 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | age=30-39 | 48 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | age=40-49 | 40 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | age=50-59 | 82 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | age=60-69 | 100 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | age=70-79 | 96 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | age=80-89 | 57 | ds004856-participants AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=female;age=20-29 | 25 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=male;age=20-29 | 16 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=female;age=30-39 | 30 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=male;age=30-39 | 18 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=female;age=40-49 | 27 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=male;age=40-49 | 13 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=female;age=50-59 | 50 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=male;age=50-59 | 32 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=female;age=60-69 | 62 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=male;age=60-69 | 38 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=female;age=70-79 | 60 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=male;age=70-79 | 36 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=female;age=80-89 | 33 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | sex=male;age=80-89 | 24 | ds004856-participants Sex, AgeCog_W1 |
| Subjects | condition=healthy cognitively healthy at entry (MMSE of at least 26) | 464 | park2025 Methods, Participants |
| Subjects | modality=MR | 464 | ds004856-file-tree sub-*/ses-*/ |
| Subjects | contrast=T1w | 464 | ds004856-file-tree anat/*_T1w.nii.gz |
| Subjects | contrast=FLAIR | 464 | ds004856-file-tree anat/*_acq-FLAIR_*_T2w.nii.gz |
| Subjects | contrast=dwi | 464 | ds004856-file-tree dwi/*_dwi.nii.gz |
| Subjects | contrast=asl | 464 | ds004856-file-tree perf/*_asl.nii.gz |
| Subjects | contrast=bold | 464 | ds004856-file-tree func/*_bold.nii.gz |
| Subjects | contrast_set=asl+bold+dwi+FLAIR+T1w every subject has each contrast in at least one wave | 464 | ds004856-file-tree |
| Subjects | modality=PT 118 subjects have both tracers | 331 | ds004856-file-tree pet/*_pet.nii.gz |
| Subjects | tracer=florbetapir the paper also reports 295 at epoch 1 | 295 | ds004856-file-tree pet/*_trc-18FAV45_* |
| Subjects | tracer=flortaucipir | 154 | ds004856-file-tree pet/*_trc-18FAV1451_* |
| Subjects | tracer=florbetapir;sex=female | 180 | ds004856-file-tree with participants.tsv Sex |
| Subjects | tracer=florbetapir;sex=male | 115 | ds004856-file-tree with participants.tsv Sex |
| Subjects | tracer=flortaucipir;sex=female | 95 | ds004856-file-tree with participants.tsv Sex |
| Subjects | tracer=flortaucipir;sex=male | 59 | ds004856-file-tree with participants.tsv Sex |
| Studies | total imaging sessions: 464 wave 1, 309 wave 2, 196 wave 3 | 969 | ds004856-file-tree sub-*/ses-*/ |
| Scans | total all MRI and PET NIfTI files | 11,210 | ds004856-file-tree sub-*/ses-*/*/*.nii.gz |
| Scans | contrast=T1w includes repeat MPRAGE runs | 967 | ds004856-file-tree anat/*_T1w.nii.gz |
| Scans | contrast=FLAIR includes repeat FLAIR runs | 968 | ds004856-file-tree anat/*_acq-FLAIR_*_T2w.nii.gz |
| Scans | contrast=dwi | 955 | ds004856-file-tree dwi/*_dwi.nii.gz |
| Scans | contrast=asl | 746 | ds004856-file-tree perf/*_asl.nii.gz |
| Scans | contrast=bold runs of five tasks: Scenes, Words, VentralVisual, rest and Hypercapnia | 6,839 | ds004856-file-tree func/*_bold.nii.gz |
| Scans | tracer=florbetapir 295 at epoch 1, 180 at epoch 2, 76 at epoch 3; the file tree also holds 551 | 551 | park2025 Methods, PET amyloid data acquisition |
| Scans | tracer=flortaucipir | 184 | ds004856-file-tree pet/*_trc-18FAV1451_* |
Sources
The keys used in the table above.
- park2025 Park et al. 2025, The Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, Scientific Data paper
- openneuro-ds004856-v1-3-0 OpenNeuro ds004856 snapshot 1.3.0 (dataset_description.json, README, CHANGES and snapshot size) website
- indi-dlbs INDI retrospective release page for the DLBS (wave 1 subset) website
- ds004856-participants participants.tsv of ds004856 (CC0), counted per row; ages from AgeCog_W1, sex from Sex computed
- ds004856-file-tree BIDS file tree of ds004856 (CC0), NIfTI files counted per suffix and tracer (acq-FLAIR T2w files counted as FLAIR) computed