{"id":12142,"date":"2022-05-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-03T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=12142"},"modified":"2022-05-11T11:07:22","modified_gmt":"2022-05-11T09:07:22","slug":"world-first-study-charts-how-our-brains-decline-as-we-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/2022\/05\/04\/world-first-study-charts-how-our-brains-decline-as-we-age\/","title":{"rendered":"World-first study charts how our brains decline as we age"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WORLD-FIRST STUDY CHARTS HOW OUR BRAINS DECLINE AS WE AGE<\/h2>\n\n

The charts could one day be used as a clinical tool to help track patients\u2019 brain development and diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n

The first comprehensive study of how the human brain changes over a lifetime could help doctors to monitor and diagnose neurological conditions such as Alzheimer\u2019s. The study, led by researchers at the University of Cambridge and the University of Philadelphia, has produced a unique set of charts based on brain scans that range from those of a 15-week-old foetus all the way up to a 100-year-old adult.<\/p>\n\n

So far, the researchers have identified a number of developmental milestones, including a rapid growth burst that begins at around 17 weeks after conception, when the brain is around 10 per cent of its full size. This growth spurt then ends at around three years of age, when the brain has reached around 80 per cent of its full size.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

They also found that the volume of grey matter, the part of the brain made up of neurons, peaks at around six years old before beginning to slowly decrease. White matter \u2013 the tissue that sends messages between different areas of grey matter \u2013 was found to peak at around 29 years old and then decline after we reach 50 years old.<\/p>\n\n

The project began when Dr Richard Bethlehem, of the University of Cambridge, and Dr Jakob Seidlitz, of the University of Pennsylvania, met at a conference. It pulls together data from nearly 125,000 MRI brain scans taken from more than 100 studies worldwide.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Series of brain scans of a woman in her 60s with early-onset Alzheimer\u2019s disease<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

\u201cThis very much started as a grassroots initiative, essentially between just me and Jakob, at a conference a couple of years ago. We just said to each other, \u2018wouldn\u2019t it be cool if we could pool all these different research studies together to create a reference point or an anchor point for any future work?\u2019\u201d Bethlehem said.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe basically started to reach out to people in our network and also started cold-calling people that had published on specific datasets or specific periods of the lifespan to ask if they wanted to come on board.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\u201cAlthough the charts are not ready for use in the clinic, the aim is to map out typical changes that occur in the brain as we age\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The team pieced together the charts by using imaging software to extract data such as the volume of grey and white matter or the thickness of the cortex \u2013 the brain\u2019s outer covering \u2013 from their huge bank of MRI scans. They estimate that the charts, which can be viewed on the open access site www.brainchart.io<\/a>, <\/strong>took around two million hours of computing time to produce.<\/p>\n\n

Although the charts are not ready for use in the clinic, the aim of the project is to map out typical changes that occur in the brain as we age. This data could then be used in much the same way that height and weight charts are used to monitor the development of children. Eventually, they could provide information on how the brain differs in neurological conditions such as Alzheimer\u2019s disease, which causes loss of brain tissue.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
An Alzheimer\u2019s brain (left) compared with a normal brain (right). The Alzheimer\u2019s brain is much smaller, due to the loss of nerve cells<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

\u201cIf you think about the situation as it exists currently, someone will have a brain scan because there\u2019s already suspicion that something might be off. And an expert like a radiologist or a neurologist will look at that scan and using all their expertise and knowledge and experience, say, \u2018yeah, we can clearly see there\u2019s something not quite right in this scan\u2019. But that\u2019s not a quantitative statement,\u201d said Bethlehem.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t say it looks atypical by this much relative to where you should be if you\u2019re this age or gender. Hopefully what this tool can provide in the future is something that\u2019s a little bit more quantitative. Something where you can say all this is extreme, but it\u2019s extreme by this much or it\u2019s changed by this much over time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

The researchers hope to expand the dataset to include more scans taken from under-represented socioeconomic and ethnic groups as well as analysing the current data in finer detail.<\/p>\n\n

\u201cWe just scratched the surface with this dataset in terms of defining the milestones in the paper,\u201d said Seidlitz. \u201cIn the future, we really hope to hone in on more concrete developmental epochs that have been done in other domains, like in molecular biology, genetics and transcriptomics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

IMAGES: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X2, GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WORLD-FIRST STUDY CHARTS HOW OUR BRAINS DECLINE AS WE AGE The charts could one day be used as a clinical tool to help track patients\u2019 brain development and diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders The first comprehensive study of how the human brain changes over a lifetime could help doctors to monitor and diagnose neurological conditions such as 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STUDY CHARTS HOW OUR BRAINS DECLINE AS WE AGE The charts could one day be used as a clinical tool to help track patients\u2019 brain development and diagnose neurodevelopmental disorders The first comprehensive study of how the human brain changes over a lifetime could help doctors to monitor and diagnose neurological conditions such 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