A person’s brain age is a more valuable and accurate predictor of health risks and potential illness than their actual chronological age, according to studies.
Now, a new AI model analyzing MRI brain images created by USC researchers may be used to reliably catch cognitive loss associated with neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s considerably sooner than past techniques.
Neurodegenerative disease risk may be accurately measured by measuring brain age. When a person’s brain has characteristics that are “older” than would be anticipated for someone of their age, they are at a higher risk for developing dementia. The team’s cutting-edge AI model’s deep learning capabilities are put to use in the scan analysis, allowing them to pick up on minor indicators of brain structure that are otherwise hard to identify yet correlate with cognitive decline.
Their research provides a unique window into human thought, and it was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on January 2.
Irimia and his colleagues collected brain MRIs from 4,681 people with normal cognition, some of whom went on to acquire dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
Using these measurements, scientists developed a neural network AI model to estimate the ages of study participants using just brain MRIs. Researchers first trained a network to create precise anatomic brain maps that show individual differences in the aging process. The researchers next compared the subjects’ self-reported brain ages to their actual ages. The wider the disparity, the higher the individuals’ probability of developing Alzheimer’s disease based on their cognitive scores.
Compared to a previous award-winning model for brain age estimate that used a different neural network design, the findings reveal that the team’s model can forecast the chronological ages of cognitively normal individuals with an average absolute error of 2.3 years.
The new model also shows that the effects of aging on different parts of the brain varied depending on a person’s gender. There are areas of the brain that age more quickly in men than women, and vice versa.
The motor cortex of the brain, which is responsible for motor function, ages more quickly in males, who are more likely to have motor impairment due to Parkinson’s disease. Furthermore, the results suggest that the right hemisphere of the female brain may age at a slower rate than the left.
This study has implications beyond the realm of just gauging the likelihood of sickness. Irimia sees a scenario in which the unique deep learning technologies created as part of the research are utilized to assist individuals understand how quickly they are aging in general.
