Scientists have mapped how our brain changes throughout our life using more than 123,000 scans from over 101,000 humans.
By Carissa Wong.
A healthy 2-year-old's brain is being scanned.
The science photo library.
A map of how our brain changes throughout our lives could help diagnose neurological conditions.
Richard Bethlehem at the University of Cambridge says that this is the first time that anyone has woven together these patterns throughout the lifespan.
Bethlehem and his colleagues analysed 123,984 scans from 101,457 humans, from a 16 week fetus to 100 year olds.
We just asked the simple questions about how big the brain is or what the variation is in possible brain size across humans.
The brain size of the participants increased from 10 per cent to 80 per cent of its maximum volume, peaking at 1066 cubic centimetres at around 11 years old.
The cortex peaked at 1.7 years old. Alzheimer's disease has been linked with cortex thinning, suggesting that early brain development may influence a person's risk of the condition in later life.
If there are effects of this feature later in life as a function of disease, then that poses an interesting question of whether we should be studying what leads to these diseases starting from really early on.
The brain map could one day be used as a reference for standard brain growth, like the growth charts for children.
Vaidehi Natu, a professor at the University of California, says she is excited to learn about this first step towards generating brain development charts that will in the future facilitate more accurate and early diagnosis of atypical developmental patterns.
The brain scans of a more diverse population need to be studied.
The journal Nature has a reference.
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