Growth charts for the brain help to explain mental illness
Researchers develop reference model for human brain development

Date:
February 1, 2022
Source:
Radboud University Medical Center
Summary:
Researchers have developed a set of growth charts for the
brain. These 'brain charts' provide reference models for brain
development and ageing across the entire human lifespan, based on a
very large data set. These models can be used to make personalized
predictions for each individual relevant to many brain conditions,
and therefore have a high clinical potential. The software tools
and models are available online.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Researchers from Radboudumc have developed a set of growth charts
for the brain. These 'brain charts' provide reference models for brain development and ageing across the entire human lifespan, based on a very
large data set. These models can be used to make personalized predictions
for each individual relevant to many brain conditions, and therefore have
a high clinical potential. The software tools and models are available
online. The work has been published in eLife.


========================================================================== "Nearly everybody is familiar with the growth charts used to measure
child development, for example the growth charts developed by the
World Health Organization," says Andre Marquand, researcher at the
department of Cognitive Neuroscience of Radboudumc. "These models are
being used worldwide to assess the development of children, for instance
by plotting body weight or height as a function of age. Pediatricians
plot the development of an individual child against variation in the
population provided by these growth charts, in order to detect, for
example, developmental delay." The researchers now provide the same
thing for the brain: a growth chart to assess brain development and aging,
not only for children, but across the lifespan from ages two to 100. "We
have analyzed high resolution MRI images from nearly 60,000 people from
around 80 MRI scanners all over the world," explains Saige Rutherford,
PhD candidate and first author. "We used measures of the volume of
different brain structures or the thickness of the cerebral cortex at
different ages and created growth charts for every brain region. In this
way we created a fine-grained atlas of the human brain throughout life." Alterations in brain structure These models enable predictions at
the level of an individual person about brain growth and ageing, with
respect to population norms. Marquand: "This provides a reference to map variation across individuals and can be used to help understand many
different brain-based conditions, like ADHD, schizophrenia, dementia
and Alzheimer's disease." These models have many uses: they can be
helpful to detect alterations in brain structure that might indicate
the emergence of a mental disorder at a very early stage. The models can
assess if a region in the brain is thicker or thinner than it ought to be
for an individual as compared to average for this life stage. But it is
also useful for stratification of mental disorders. For example, finding commonalities between individuals that might describe different subtypes
of disorders, or in the future to identify individuals that could respond
to certain treatments. In addition, the model enables tracking of disease progression over time, and also monitoring the effect of a treatment.

Brain fingerprints A reference model for the brain like this has not
been available before. The models and also the software to use them are
made freely available online to the community. "We use an established
software pipeline called 'Freesurfer' to measure the volume and thickness
of brain structures," explains Marquand. "This pipeline is used by
thousands of hospitals worldwide, so they can easily get the measures
they need and use our software to determine how a group of their own
patients or study participants can be placed within the population."
In the near future, Marquand thinks the software could be of great use in clinical studies. "If you want to investigate a new medication against
a certain brain-based condition, for example Alzheimer's disease, you
could use our software to identify subjects, with a particular profile,
such as early stage degeneration. This could function like a 'brain
based fingerprint' which could make research more efficient by making
it easier to detect differences between groups of people. Eventually
such tools might also be helpful in the clinic to target medications
or interventions precisely to the people that need them." special
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========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Saige Rutherford, Charlotte Fraza, Richard Dinga, Seyed Mostafa Kia,
Thomas Wolfers, Mariam Zabihi, Pierre Berthet, Amanda Worker, Serena
Verdi, Derek Andrews, Laura Han, Johanna MM Bayer, Paola Dazzan,
Phillip McGuire, Roel T Mocking, Aart Schene, Chandra Sripada, Ivy
F Tso, Elizabeth R Duval, Soo-Eun Chang, Brenda W. Pennix, Mary
M. Heitzeg, S Alexandra Burt, Luke Hyde, David Amaral, Christine
Wu Nordahl, Ole A Andreasssen, Lars T Westlye, Roland Zahn,
Henricus G Ruhe, Christian Beckmann, Andre F Marquand. Charting
brain growth and aging at high spatial precision. eLife, 2022;
11 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.72904 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/02/220201115152.htm

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