What is ADNI?

ALZHEIMER'S AND DEMENTIA JOURNAL

ADNI stands for Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative.

ADNI is a long-term research project that collects information about brain health, memory, and aging. Researchers around the world use the data that ADNI collects to make new discoveries. These discoveries help us better understand brain health, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease.

  • The ADNI study started over 20 years ago.


  • So far, more than 3,500 people across the USA and Canada have taken part.


  • Researchers all over the world use ADNI data to make new discoveries about the brain, with over 7,000 scientific papers written.

Click HERE to watch Principal Investigator of ADNI, Dr. Michael Weiner’s 2024 talk about ADNI and its two decades of impact

How has ADNI helped
Alzheimer’s research?

ADNI is one of the most widely-used Alzheimer’s research datasets. More than 7,000 scientific publications have used ADNI data. Scientists around the world use ADNI data to learn early signs of Alzheimer’s-related changes long before symptoms appear.

ADNI has helped establish the scientific groundwork for the tools used to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and the new treatments that target the biology of the disease including:

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  • Playing a key role in guiding major clinical trials that led to the development of anti-amyloid therapies, such as aducanumab, lecanemab, and donanemab, which work by reducing the buildup of amyloid, a protein involved in Alzheimer’s (Weiner et al 2025).
  • Establishing amyloid PET imaging as the “gold standard” for detecting amyloid plaques in the brain. TEAM-ADNI participants are able to receive their amyloid PET results.
  • Testing new, less invasive ways to detect Alzheimer’s through simple blood tests (Benedet et al.; Schindler et al 2024).
  • Giving us a better understanding of how different brain diseases can overlap and influence one another such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Lewy Body diseases (Tosun et al., 2024). (Franzmeier et al 2025).
  • Giving us a better understanding of how overall health affects brain health. Multiple chronic health conditions can speed up the buildup of amyloid in the brain (Bu et al., 2025). Managing chronic health issues might not just improve your overall health but could also slow down brain changes related to Alzheimer’s disease. It is a great reminder of how much your everyday habits matter – not just for your body, but for your mind too.

To read more, see the Special Issue in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia dedicated to ADNI’s 20th anniversary.

What is
TEAM-ADNI?

TEAM-ADNI is part of the larger ADNI study. TEAM-ADNI is an observational study, meaning no medications or treatments are given by the study.

The study collects information about participants to help researchers understand brain health and memory as people age.

Participants are asked to answer questions about themselves and their medical history, take memory tests, and provide blood and urine samples.

Participants also have the option to have brain imaging scans (called MRI and PET scans). Information collected in TEAM-ADNI is added to the ADNI research database.

Participant privacy is very important to ADNI. ADNI shares data with researchers without information that can be used to identify participants.

Research has not always included people from a variety of backgrounds. A goal of TEAM-ADNI is to include people in ADNI (and Alzheimer’s research in general) who have been left out. Including people from different backgrounds helps make research findings useful for everyone.

This helps TEAM-ADNI and ADNI’s overall goal to help researchers discover new ways to detect, diagnose, and treat Alzheimer’s disease that will work for all.

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