Key points from article :
Researchers have created a series of brain charts spanning our entire lifespan – from a 15-week-old fetus to 100-year-old adult.
The study shows how the brain expands rapidly in early life and later shrinks with age.
The charts are the result of a research project spanning six continents and bringing together possibly the largest ever MRI datasets ever aggregated – almost 125,000 brain scans from over 100 different studies.
Brain charts confirm the age when the brain’s major tissue classes reach peak volume and when specific regions of the brain reach maturity.
The decline in white matter volume begins to accelerate after 50 years.
The team intends brain charts to be used as a clinical tool.
The datasets already have around 165 different diagnostic labels, meaning that researchers can see how the brain differs in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease.
The team used standardised neuroimaging software to extract data from MRI scans.
They used a framework implemented by the World Health Organization for generating growth charts to build their brain charts.
The team has created the tool with a reference framework to allow other researchers and clinicians to adjust their own datasets and compare them against the BrainChart population.
“One of the things we’ve been able to do, ... is to stitch together data across the whole life span", stated Dr Richard Bethlehem, co-researcher.
The research was carried out with an international team of researchers and published on the open access site brainchart.io in Nature.
