BENGALURU: This could be the holy grail for neuroscientists in mapping and understanding the human brain through its life span. A team of researchers from across six continents has created a series of brain charts -- the largest ever dataset, spanning the entire human lifespan from a 15-week-old-foetus to 100-year old-adult -- that show how human brains expand rapidly in early life and slowly shrink as people age.
The study published in ‘Nature’, world’s leading British multidisciplinary weekly science journal, is the pioneer study to map the human brain growth curves, and has contributions from international researchers, including Indian researchers.
Study tracks growth of brain from foetus to adulthood
Indian researchers from the Consortium on Vulnerability to Externalizing Disorders and Addictions (cVEDA) led by scientists from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans), Bengaluru are part of the study.
“The study published in ‘Nature’ online on April 6 is the result of a research project bringing together almost 1,25,000 brain scans from over a 100 different studies, possibly the largest ever MRI datasets ever aggregated,” said Professor of Psychiatry, Centre for Addiction Medicine, Nimhans, Vivek Benegal, who along with Dr Bharath Holla, asst prof of psychiatry, Department of Integrative Medicine, Nimhans were the Indian authors from the cVEDA and have contributed the Indian dataset to this global initiative.
While growth charts have been the cornerstone of paediatric healthcare and are used as biomarkers to monitor the growth and development of children in comparison to their peers, there are no similar reference charts for measuring age-related changes in the human brain. “Assessments of brain development and aging are particularly relevant to the study of psychiatric disorders.
While research in neuroscience and psychiatry has discovered significant differences in brain structure, function and psychological functioning between people with and without mental illnesses, these are still at the level of differences between groups of people with and without the illness. The data in neuroscience has not translated into individual care and does not account for wide variations seen in the real world. This study is a major step towards filling this gap,” added Benegal.
The brain charts will allow the researchers to confirm, and in some cases, show for the first time developmental milestones that have previously only been hypothesised, more as prognosis, early diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. Benegal said the cVEDA study, which provided a large number of brain scans of youngsters and young adults from India, is “one of the larger international neuro-developmental cohort studies, of over 9,000 youngsters from seven sites all over India.
Set up through a Newton-Bhabha grant funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Medical Research Council, UK, the cVEDA follows these young people through their childhood adolescence and young adulthood to understand how their inherited genetic programming is moderated by their exposures to environmental risks to shape their brain maturation and their psychological abilities, towards wellbeing or mental illness,” added the senior psychiatrist.
“Another measure of prediction and tracking that we are studying is an estimate of brain age. This is an index for quantifying individuals’ brain health as deviation from a normative brain aging trajectory. Higher or lower-than-expected brain age is thought to reflect different from average rate of brain aging, and is increasingly understood to be associated with mental illness,” said Holla.