A recent study published in Current Biology finds that researchers are now able to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to determine a person s age with about 92 percent accuracy at least if they re between the ages of 3 and 20. But aside from simply being a neat trick, the technology can be used to detect abnormal brain development within that age range a key period of brain development.
For the study, researchers from the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine scanned the brains of 885 subjects, using a multidimensional approach that simultaneously analyzed 231 individual features of the developing brain. Such scans allow researchers to more closely track how the brain develops and grows so that they can determine which features are changing the most at a given age. As lead researcher Dr. Timothy Brown explains, this new method creates a much more complete model of the developing brain anatomy.
In establishing the normal pattern of brain development, researchers can create a template of what is expected as a child grows up. The hope is that this standard can be used, then, to identify developmental disorders and see where development has gone wrong.
We have height curves and weight curves to evaluate children s physical growth, says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross, so why not develop a brain curve as well? If the method is shown to be reliable in longer, larger studies, this technique may help especially in evaluating younger people with abnormal development.
