Neuroimaging and genetics in aging and age-related disease

Neuroimaging, genetics, and phenomic explorations in the study of brain aging seek to characterize typical patterns of morphometric, function, and connectomics and how these change over the lifespan. With a detailed but multifaceted knowledge of these patterns, neuroscientists and clinicians can better recognize the processes at play when age-related brain changes vary from these expectations. Employing a range of neuroimaging methods, genome-wide as well as focused gene targeting, and ‘big data’ computation, progress is occurring toward gaining such understanding. We are excited to present these articles as a special issue of Brain Imaging and Behavior which grew out of from our New Horizons in Human Brain Imaging meeting on the theme of the neuroimaging of brain aging, held in March 2013.