Cross‐Sectional Brain Age Assessments Are Limited in Predicting Future Brain Change
The concept of brain age (BA) describes an integrative imaging marker of brain health, often suggested to reflect aging processes. However, the degree to which cross-sectional MRI features, including BA, reflect past, ongoing, and future brain changes across different tissue types from macro- to microstructure remains controversial. Here, we use multimodal imaging data of 39,325 UK Biobank participants, aged 44-82 years at baseline and 2,520 follow-ups within 1.12-6.90 years to examine BA changes and their relationship to anatomical brain changes. We find insufficient evidence to conclude that BA reflects the rate of brain aging. However, modality-specific differences in brain ages reflect the state of the brain, highlighting diffusion and multimodal MRI brain age as potentially useful cross-sectional markers.
Authors
- Didac Vidal‐Piñeiro (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9997-9156)
- Lars Tjelta Westlye (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8644-956X)
- Thomas Wolfers (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7693-0621)
- Ole A. Andreassen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4461-3568)
- Hajer Nakua
- Ivan I. Maximov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6319-6774)
- Max Korbmacher (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8113-2560)
- Eli Eikefjord (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0067-8180)
- Mengyun Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8408-4149)
- Dennis van der Meer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9473-4536)
Institutions
- Oslo University Hospital (NO)
- Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (NO)
- University of Oslo (NO)
- Columbia University Irving Medical Center (US)
- Haukeland University Hospital (NO)
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (NL)
- Vizrt (Norway) (NO)
- University of Tübingen (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Human Brain Mapping
- Published
- 2025-04-15
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.70203
- Citations
- 7
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 9.52
Funders
- European Commission
- Universitetet i Oslo
- Norges Forskningsråd
- Helse Sør-Øst RHF