BrainAGE & Maturation

How is BrainAGE related to puberty and cognition?

BrainAGE, or the Brain-Age Gap Estimate, is a framework that predicts someone’s age from MRI data. Originally used to investigate brain aging in older adults, it’s being applied more often to adolescent populations, where BrainAGE is commonly interpreted as reflecting accelerated or decelerated brain maturation. However, does BrainAGE track with other metrics of maturation in adolescence? That’s what I looked at in the recent project!

If you’re interested in reading more about the project, check out the publication here: BrainAGE and maturation manuscript

If you’re interested in a quick overview, here are some highlights:

• I used three BrainAGE models, one previously validated model trained on 9-19 year olds, and two that I created using data from specific age ranges that lined up with our test sample, obtained from the ABCD Study. These models are available on my github!

• Across models, age ranges, and report type, adolescents who were farther along in puberty than their same-age peers also tended to have an older BrainAGE, or a predicted age older than their actual age.

• The cognition results were murkier! Cognition was inconsistently related to BrainAGE across the models.