Brain scans provide lifespan references for a major brain link
Regional volumes peaked at 26.0 years centrally, 47.2 years at the back and 47.5 years at the front in 24,305 healthy controls.
Paper by Yuqi Luo, Li Chai, Kun Chen et al.
Multicenter
Limit: References measure structure; weak links with processing speed and cognition failed correction for multiple comparisons
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Researchers analyzed brain scans from 24,305 healthy controls aged 4–85 in a multicenter retrospective observational study. They built reference ranges for the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerve fibers connecting the brain’s two halves, and five of its regions. The references accounted for age, sex and estimated volume inside the skull.
The team applied these references to 4,081 people with six neurological or immune-related neurological conditions, including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and disease of the brain’s small blood vessels. Alzheimer’s disease and small vessel disease were associated with lower-than-expected volumes across multiple regions. Multiple sclerosis showed lower volumes mainly in central and front-central regions. The authors concluded that the references provide a framework for describing individual structural differences, with potential clinical applications requiring further validation.
Why it matters
For age-related conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, an important question is how an individual’s brain structure compares with expectations for their age, rather than with a group average.
Caveats
The retrospective observational design cannot establish causes. Clinical applications were exploratory, and weak links with processing speed and cognition did not survive statistical correction for testing multiple relationships.
The paper
Yuqi Luo, Li Chai, Kun Chen et al.
Frontiers in Neurology, Oct 30, 2026, CC BY, Accepted, not yet published
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