How to Tell a Person’s “Brain Age”

Using brain scans and methylation markers, scientists develop ways to assess neurologic aging in humans.

Written byDiana Kwon

| 4 min read

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Age as a state of mind is not just the stuff of birthday card clichés. In recent years, scientists have plumbed the molecular depths of the body and surfaced with tell-tale biomarkers of aging, some of which extend to the brain. Now, researchers are harnessing another tool, neuroimaging, to measure the organ’s age, and using that to predict how long a person will live.

“People are searching for the tree rings of humans,” James Cole, a research associate at Imperial College London, told The Scientist.

Cole and his colleagues recently devised their own technique of predicting the biological age of people’s brains using a combination of machine learning and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. In a study published last month (April 25) in Molecular Psychiatry, ...

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Meet the Author

Diana Kwon
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Diana is a freelance science journalist who covers the life sciences, health, and academic life. She’s a regular contributor to The Scientist and her work has appeared in several other publications, including Scientific American, Knowable, and Quanta. Diana was a former intern at The Scientist and she holds a master’s degree in neuroscience from McGill University. She’s currently based in Berlin, Germany.
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