Collaborate With Us

We welcome collaboration requests for access to resources generated by studies conducted within the Mesulam Center, including our NIA-funded Alzheimer's Disease Center, R/K series grants and similar projects. These resources include:

• Access to older cognitively healthy and cognitively impaired research participants
• Tissue obtained from participants (e.g., blood, DNA, post mortem brain)
• Clinical/demographic and neuropsychological data
• Neuroimaging data
• Neuropathological findings from participants in our brain donation program

All collaboration requests are reviewed by the center's executive committee, which will evaluate the request for scientific merit, likelihood of research leading to publications and/or grant applications and availability of the requested resources. Investigators should discuss their projects with the relevant core leader prior to submitting a collaborative request to ensure feasibility. Please carefully read the application in PDF form before submitting online to confirm you are in agreement with the conditions of collaboration.

submit a collaborative request online

Our Alzheimer's Disease Center is one of 30 centers funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and a contributor to the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center, housed at the University of Washington in Seattle. All centers administer a standardized set of procedures, known as the Uniform Data Set of the NIA Alzheimer Disease Centers program. The data collected include important information about memory changes with aging, longitudinal changes over time, and many variables that might contribute to different trajectories of cognitive aging (e.g., years of education, medical history, family history, cognitive test performance). For more details on what variables are available through our ADC, please refer to the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center.

All Resources

Clinical and Data Cores

• Participants (patients, healthy controls, caregivers) to volunteer in approved ancillary studies
• Data:
  • Demographics (e.g., age, race, gender, education)
  • Participant family history
  • Participant medication
  • Participant health history
  • Physical information (e.g., height, weight, BP, heart rate, eyesight and hearing status)
  • Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR)
  • Neuropsychiatric Inventory Questionnaire (NPI-Q)
  • Activities of Daily Living Scale (ADL-Q)
  • Functional Activities Questionnaire (FAQ)
  • Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS)
  • Neurological exam findings
    • Parkinsonian signs
    • Neurological signs considered to be consistent with cerebrovascular disease
    • Higher cortical visual problem suggesting posterior cortical atrophy
    • Findings suggestive of progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal syndrome or other related disorder
    • Findings suggestive of ALS
    • Normal-pressure hydrocephalus: gait apraxia
    • Other findings
  • Clinician judgment of symptoms
    • Cognitive symptoms (e.g., memory, orientation, language)
    • Behavioral symptoms (e.g., apathy, depressed mood, disinhibition)
    • Motor symptoms (e.g., gait disorder, falls, tremor)
    • Overall course of decline or predominant domain
  • Neuropsychological test battery scores; see a complete PDF list of the battery
  • Clinical diagnosis (e.g., amnestic mild cognitive impairment, primary progressive aphasia)
  • Clinician-assessed medical conditions (e.g., cancer, diabetes, hypertension)
  • APOE genotype

Neuropathological Core

• Fixed tissue
• Frozen tissue
• Unstained sections
• DNA
• Plasma
• CSF
• Neuropathologic findings (e.g., neuropathological diagnosis, BRAAK stage, CERAD stage)

Neuroimaging Core

• Structural MRI (sMRI)
• Resting state MRI (rsMRI)
• Diffuse Tensor Imaging (DTI)
• FLAIR Imaging
• Amyloid PET
• FDG PET
• Tau PET