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Time of India
12 hours ago
- Health
- Time of India
Can a brain scan predict your death? Scientists say it might be possible and even hint diseases you could face
A quick MRI brain scan in your 40s might reveal more than just brain health; it could also predict how long you might live. According to researchers at Duke University, changes in the brain's structure can reveal how quickly your body is biologically ageing, even before symptoms of age-related diseases appear. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now This breakthrough could help doctors predict cognitive decline, chronic illnesses, and even early signs of dementia. The study highlights the role of advanced tools like DunedinPACE, which can analyse brain tissue changes and ageing patterns, paving the way for early detection and preventative healthcare strategies for longer, healthier lives. How MRI scans reveal your true biological age and future health risks Biological ageing refers to the rate at which your body is deteriorating compared to your chronological age. Two people may both be 45 years old, yet one might have a biologically younger brain and body. The Duke research revealed that those aging biologically faster had brain patterns typically seen in older adults, including tissue shrinkage and fluid buildup. These structural changes are often linked to memory decline, slower thinking, and increased risk of chronic diseases like Alzheimer's, stroke, and heart conditions. A single MRI brain scan during your 40s can now estimate your biological age and predict health risks decades in advance. Detecting faster brain aging early could transform preventative healthcare, allowing people to slow down age-related decline before it becomes irreversible. For individuals concerned about memory, dementia, or overall longevity, brain imaging could soon become as essential as routine blood tests. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now How brain scans reveal your pace of ageing The research team used an MRI-based tool called DunedinPACN, designed to calculate the Pace of Aging from a single brain scan. The system focuses on key markers like: Gray matter volume – essential for processing and cognition Cortical thickness – a sign of overall brain health Hippocampal size – critical for memory and learning Ventricle volume – an indicator of brain tissue loss These measures provide a snapshot of how the brain is holding up compared to others of the same age. What faster brain ageing means for your health. People classified as 'fast agers' had: 18% higher risk of chronic illnesses like heart disease, lung issues, and frailty within a few years 40% higher risk of early death compared to slower agers Increased likelihood of cognitive decline, memory loss, and early dementia: Interestingly, those aging slowly had brain patterns resembling much younger individuals, such as thicker cortex and larger hippocampal volumes, which are associated with better memory and healthier aging overall. How brain structure changes predict dementia risk The hippocampus plays a vital role in memory formation. A shrinking hippocampus can indicate faster aging and an increased risk of dementia. The study also noted that enlarged brain ventricles, often filled with fluid, are a sign of surrounding tissue loss—a hallmark of advanced aging. Together, these features act as biological signals of how well or poorly the brain is coping with the aging process. When applied to a separate group of adults aged 52 to 89, the DunedinPACN method showed that fast agers were 60% more likely to develop dementia later in life. These individuals also experienced cognitive decline earlier than their slow-aging counterparts. In contrast, those aging slowly had 'younger brains,' maintaining better memory and thinking skills well into their later years. Future of brain ageing research Unlike existing aging clocks, which often combine data from various age groups, this study focused exclusively on individuals in midlife, ensuring more accurate results. The ability to detect signs of accelerated aging at 40–50 years old offers an opportunity for early intervention—whether through lifestyle changes, cognitive training, or advanced therapies—to delay the onset of age-related diseases. Also Read |
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Brain scans could reveal your true biological age
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Scientists can now judge how fast your whole body is aging based on a single snapshot of your brain, researchers claim in a new study. The scientists, who published their findings July 1 in the journal Nature Aging, have developed a benchmark of biological aging based on brain MRIs. The team says the tool can predict an individual's future risk of cognitive impairment and dementia, chronic conditions like heart disease, physical frailty and early death. "Our paper presents a new way of measuring how fast a person is aging at any given moment using the information available in a single brain MRI," said first author Ahmad Hariri, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University. "Faster aging increases our risk for many diseases including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and dementia," he told Live Science in an email. Hariri and colleagues used data from the Dunedin Study, which followed 1,037 people from Dunedin, New Zealand, from birth to middle age. These participants, born in 1972 and 1973, periodically received 19 assessments to check the function of their heart, brain, liver, kidneys and more. To develop their tool, the team analyzed the brain MRIs taken from this cohort at age 45 and ran the data about brain structure — the volume and thickness of various brain regions and the ratio of white to gray matter — through a machine learning algorithm. They compared the processed brain data to other data collected from the participants at the same time, such as tests of physical and cognitive decline, subjective health statuses, and signs of facial aging, like wrinkles. They asserted that bigger declines in those areas were tied to a faster pace of aging, overall, and then correlated features of the brain data to those metrics. They called their resulting model "Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from Neuroimaging," or DunedinPACNI. Related: Epigenetics linked to the maximum life spans of mammals Previously, the team created a similar tool called Dunedin Pace of Aging Calculated from the Epigenome (DunedinPACE). That metric looked at methylation — chemical tags that attach to DNA molecules — in blood samples to estimate people's pace of aging. Methylation is a type of "epigenetic change," meaning it alters genes activity without changing DNA's underlying code. "[DunedinPACE] has been widely adopted by studies with available epigenetic data," Hariri said. "DunedinPACNI now allows studies without epigenetic data but with brain MRI to measure accelerated aging." The researchers directly compared DunedinPACNI to DunedinPACE, finding that they generated similar results. To see if their new tool could be useful beyond Dunedin, the team used it to estimate the pace of aging using MRIs in other datasets: 42,000 MRIs from the U.K. Biobank; over 1,700 MRIs from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI); and 369 from the BrainLat set, which includes data from five South American countries. "Making sure our findings generalize across datasets and demographic groups is a big priority for brain imaging research," study co-author Ethan Whitman, a doctoral student at Duke, told Live Science in an email. They found that DunedinPACNI could also estimate the rate of aging in these other cohorts, and that it did so as accurately as other measures used in the past. The U.K. Biobank and ADNI also include measures of specific health effects of aging, including tests of physical frailty, like grip strength and walking speed, as well as rates of heart attack, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and death from all causes within the cohorts. Using these additional measures, the team was able to link faster aging rates, as determined with DunedinPACNI, with increased risks of heart attack, stroke, COPD and death. Hariri believes DunedinPACNI has the potential to be widely adopted because the type of MRIs it uses are routinely collected. Now it's a matter of crunching the data and determining standards of what reflects "healthy" and "poor" aging, he said. "The fact that it worked well with the BrainLat data is a big win for the investigators because it supports the generalizability of the model,' said Dr. Dan Henderson, a primary care physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who was not involved with the study. "It would still be worth looking at other data sets where genetic and other factors might be different in important ways," he added. RELATED STORIES —Biological aging may not be driven by what we thought —Taurine is 'not a reliable biomarker of anything yet': Study challenges hype over 'anti-aging' supplement —Doctors say AI model can predict 'biological age' from a selfie — and want to use it to guide cancer treatment Henderson said he could see DunedinPACNI eventually being used in place of conventional health measures to fine-tune medical interventions for individual patients. Whitman also sees broad implications for the research. Assuming it's validated for use by doctors, he thinks it could help patients prepare for age-related health issues before they manifest."We were really amazed that our tool was able to predict disease risk before symptoms had started," Whitman told Live Science in an email. "We think this is a great example of why it's important to study aging in general, but especially in younger, healthy people. If you only study people after they have gotten sick, you're missing a lot of the story." Brain quiz: Test your knowledge of the most complex organ in the body
