Is Your Brain Aging Too Fast? New Study Can Tell from One Brain Scan

A team of researchers from Duke University, Harvard, and the University of Otago have developed a brain scan tool that can estimate how fast someone is aging — long before signs of physical or cognitive decline appear. The findings, published in the journal Nature Aging, reveal that a single MRI scan in midlife can predict a person’s risk for chronic diseases, including dementia, decades in advance.

While some people age gracefully, others begin to show signs of frailty or memory loss earlier than expected.

Using brain imaging data, researchers created a tool called DunedinPACNI, designed to assess biological aging from just one snapshot of the brain.

To build this tool, researchers used data from the Dunedin Study, a long-term health project following 1,037 people born in New Zealand in 1972-73. Over two decades, researchers tracked participants’ health indicators — like blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, and kidney function — to calculate a “biological aging” score. They then trained DunedinPACNI using MRI scans from 860 of these individuals at age 45.

The tool was tested on additional datasets from the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Latin America. Across all groups, individuals identified as “fast agers” by the tool showed more rapid memory decline, reduced hippocampal volume, and poorer performance on cognitive tests. Alarmingly, in one study of adults aged 52 to 89, fast agers were 60% more likely to develop dementia, and 40% more likely to die within several years.

"The link between aging of the brain and body are pretty compelling," said Ahmad Hariri, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke. The tool also worked across socioeconomic and racial groups, showing consistent accuracy.

With dementia care costs projected to skyrocket to $9.12 trillion by 2050, early detection is critical. “Drugs can't resurrect a dying brain,” Hariri noted, highlighting the urgency of earlier interventions.

Reference: Duke University. (2025, July 2). A midlife MRI that spots rapid aging and signals disease long before symptoms. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 2, 2025 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/07/250702074312.htm