The “developmental clock” shows increases and decreases in brain’s cortical surface, as well as the dynamic cascade of many other brain measures, all changing with increasing age (from age 3-20). (Credit: University of California San Diego of Medicine)
It isn’t uncommon for people to pass for ages much older or younger than their years, but researchers have now found that this feature doesn’t apply to our brains. The findings reported online on August 16 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, show that sophisticated brain scans can be used to accurately predict age, give or take a year.
It’s a “carnival trick” that may have deeper implications for both brain science and medicine.
“We have uncovered a ‘developmental clock’ of sorts within the brain — a biological signature of maturation that captures age differences quite well, regardless of other kinds of differences that exist across individuals,” says Timothy Brown of the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
Together with UCSD’s Anders Dale and Terry Jernigan and researchers from nine other universities, Brown used structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 885 people ranging in age from 3 to 20. Those brain scans were used to identify 231 biomarkers of brain anatomy that, when combined, could assess an individual’s age with more than 92 percent accuracy. That’s beyond what’s been possible with any other biological measure, the researchers say. Via Brain scans don’t lie about age.
