Brain charts for the human lifespan.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Aggregated observational cohort and cross-sectional neuroimaging datasets (design analogy for normative modeling)
PubMed 35388223 · doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04554-y
What was done
Researchers aggregated 123,984 MRI scans from 101,457 human participants spanning 115 days post-conception to 100 years of age across more than 100 primary studies. Using this dataset, they modeled non-linear lifespan trajectories of structural brain metrics to generate standardized centile reference charts and an open interactive benchmarking tool.
What was found
The brain charts identified previously unreported neurodevelopmental milestones, showed high longitudinal stability across individual assessments, and maintained robustness to technical differences between studies. Centile scores demonstrated higher heritability than non-centiled raw MRI phenotypes and provided standardized measures to identify atypical neuroanatomical patterns in neurological and psychiatric disorders. Specific numerical metrics and effect sizes were not reported in the abstract.
Why it matters
This study provides the first comprehensive, lifespan-wide normative growth charts for human brain morphology, establishing a standardized framework to quantify individual structural brain differences and disease-related deviations analogous to pediatric growth charts.
Limits
The abstract explicitly acknowledges known representation biases in existing MRI studies relative to global population diversity. Detailed scanner specifications, cohort-specific demographics, attrition rates, and exact statistical estimates are omitted from the abstract.
Cited by
- contradicts Human brains continue growing at a fetal rate of growth until approximately nine or ten years of age.