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Your brain expands and shrinks over time — these charts show how

Based on more than 120,000 brain scans, the charts are still preliminary. But researchers hope they could one day be used as a routine clinical tool by physicians.
  1. Max Kozlov
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When neuroscientist Jakob Seidlitz took his 15-month-old son to the paediatrician for a check-up last week, he left feeling unsatisfied. There wasn’t anything wrong with his son — the youngster seemed to be developing at a typical pace, according to the height and weight charts the physician used. What Seidlitz felt was missing was an equivalent metric to gauge how his son’s brain was growing. “It is shocking how little biological information doctors have about this critical organ,” says Seidlitz, who is based at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

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Nature 604, 230-231 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00971-1

References

  1. Bethlehem, R. A. I. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04554-y (2022).

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  2. Marek, S. et al. Nature 603, 654–660 (2022).

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