Almost as soon as the brain stops developing in adolescence, it starts aging — pruning the neuron-to-neuron connections called synapses, reducing the supportive glial cells that hold neurons in place, and eventually losing both white and gray matter. This aging process is slow, but it is linked to cognitive decline.
However, “brain age” doesn’t always equal the age on the calendar. Depending on an individual’s health and genetics, some brains age faster than others. A new study finds that machine learning can reveal the pace of brain aging from only two anatomical brain scans. The findings could be used to develop better ways of predicting who will get dementia or Alzheimer’s disease and to help determine what factors cause the brain to age more quickly.
“It’s a great direction,” says James Cole, a professor of neuroimage computing at Univ. College London.
The idea of brain age outpacing calendar age is not new. Body systems don’t start to show the effects of age at the same pace, and neuroscientists have been exploring the gap between brain age and numerical...
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