↓Skip to main content
  1. News/

ABCD-J 2025 Annual Meeting

Bonn, 04 July 2025 - The ABCD-J consortium convened its 2025 Annual Meeting with DLR Projektträger and ABCD-J project site representatives to reflect on milestones and plan future directions for the platform.

ABCD-J continues to expand as a scientific and networking platform, designed to promote collaboration internally while also supporting external scientific outreach. The platform plays a critical role in enabling cross-site data sharing, shared infrastructure, and translational applications of mobile health tools. Notably, it actively supports and integrates with interdisciplinary research initiatives such as TRR 379, which investigates the mechanisms of aggressive behavior in psychiatric disorders; the Motor SFB 1451, focused on motor function and its neural basis across clinical populations; and case-e, a project that seeks to develop software-as-a-service for actionable study and data management.

Other key milestones highlighted at the meeting included:

  • Planning for several upcoming collaborative studies using ABCD-J infrastructure, including a multicentre study study using JTrack for smartphone-based cross-diagnostic assessment of daily life symptoms in psychiatric and neurological disorders.
  • Progress in the development of browser-based annotation tools and metadata schema to simplify submissions to the ABCD-J Data Catalog.
  • Ongoing integration with the Distribits 2025 Conference and expansion of ABCD-J resources such as public newsfeeds, educational outreach, and technical documentation.

The group also celebrated several recent publications emerging from ABCD-J collaborations, including:

  • Reetz, K., Lischewski, S.A., Dogan, I., Didszun, C., Pishnamaz, M., Konrad, K., Marx-Schütt, K., Farmer, J., Lynch, D.R., Corben, L.A., Pandolfo, M. & Schulz, J.B. on behalf of the FACROSS study group, 2025. Friedreich’s ataxia—a rare multisystem disease. The Lancet Neurology, 24(7), pp.614–624. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(25)00175-9.
  • Turna, M., Eckert, J., Meier‑Böke, K., Narava M., Chaliani, I., Eickhoff S.B., Schilbach L. & Dukart J., 2025. Real world evidence for altered communication patterns in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. npj Digital Medicine, 8, Article 155. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01545-x.
  • Sahandi Far, M., Fischer, J.M., Senge, S., Rathmakers, R., Meissner, T., Schneble, D., Narava, M., Eickhoff, S.B. & Dukart, J., 2025. Cross‑Platform Ecological Momentary Assessment App (JTrack‑EMA+): Development and Usability Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 27, e51689. https://doi.org/10.2196/51689.
  • Wunderle, V., Kuzu, T.D., Tscherpel, C., Fink, G.R., Grefkes, C. & Weiss, P.H., 2024. Age- and sex-related changes in motor functions: a comprehensive assessment and component analysis. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 16, p.1368052. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2024.1368052.
  • Rentz, C., Kaiser, V., Jung, N., Turlach, B.A., Sahandi Far, M., Peterburs, J., Boltes, M., Schnitzler, A., Amunts, K., Dukart, J., & Minnerop, M., 2024. Sensor-Based Gait and Balance Assessment in Healthy Adults: Analysis of Short-Term Training and Sensor Placement Effects. Sensors, 24, p.5598. https://doi.org/10.3390/s24175598.

Looking ahead, DLR Projektträger plans to visit one of the ABCD-J project sites to gather on-site impressions of the research taking place within the ABCD-J framework. The next annual meeting will be scheduled in 2026, with hopes of further broadening the collaborative impact of the project.

ABCD-J 2025 Annual Meeting Attendees; Pictured from left to right: Jenna Swarthout Goddard, Melanie Schütte, Joseph Kambeitz, Axel Krug, Anna Geiger, Kathrin Reetz, Bianka Hilfrich, Simon Eickhoff; Not pictured: Simone Hienz.
ABCD-J 2025 Annual Meeting Attendees; Pictured from left to right: Jenna Swarthout Goddard, Melanie Schütte, Joseph Kambeitz, Axel Krug, Anna Geiger, Kathrin Reetz, Bianka Hilfrich, Simon Eickhoff; Not pictured: Simone Hienz.