Are you and your brain the same age? According to BGU, not always
Using this model, the researchers are able to center in on which part of the brain has aged the most – useful in its own right when diagnosing patients with neurodegenerative diseases.
By ZACHARY KEYSERBrain scan (illustrative)(photo credit: ING IMAGE/ASAP)
Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) have developed a way to determine the age of your brain. They note, however, that it doesn't always synced up with your actual age – which can be used as health biomarkers for neurodegenerative diseases and their progressions, the university announced on Wednesday.Their findings were recently published in the medical journal Human Brain Mapping.To accomplish this, the research team developed an algorithm using data from Magnetic Resonance Images (MRIs). After they compiled the data, which was based on the brain imaging of thousands of healthy subjects, they trained their system to determine these brain age predictions to within three years.Using this model, the researchers are also able to center in on which anatomical part of the brain has aged the most, which can be useful in its own right when diagnosing patients with neurodegenerative diseases."Our method introduces the possibility that brain age and its divergence from the chronological age could be used as an early brain health biomarker. This would help us trace the brain's development and give us early warning of diseases, which are essential steps toward developing effective treatments. Additionally, such a biomarker would provide further insights into what happens when diseases affect the brain,” the researchers said in a press release.There were 15 open source data sets that the researchers used in total, which included the MRIs of over 10,000 healthy subjects aged 4-94 – encompassing a wide range of information needed in order to create their predictive model."This was done by developing an inference scheme based on multiple 'explanation maps' – spatial maps that assign a measure of the importance of each brain region to the prediction," BGU said in a press release. "These maps were combined across subjects, thus creating a reliable population-based, rather than a subject-specific map. Such maps were able to identify the ventricles and cisterns, previously found as general atrophy markers, as the most important in predicting brain age. These novel findings open up interesting avenues for future research."The research team was led by Ph.D. candidate Gidon Levakov and former BGU student Dr. Gideon Rosenthal – both of whom studied with BGU's Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Prof. Ilan Shelef of the Department of Diagnostic Imaging, Dr. Tammy Riklin Raviv of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Prof. Galia Avidan of the Departments of Psychology and Cognitive and Brain Sciences, all members of the Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience.