MRI based biomarker for brain aging in rodents and non-human primates

This work presents two novel species-specific adaptations of a MRI based biomarker that indicates individual deviations from normal brain aging trajectories for rodents and non-human primates. By employing automatic, species-specific preprocessing of anatomical brain MRI as well as high-dimensional pattern recognition methods, this approach uses the distribution of healthy brain-aging patterns to estimate individual brain ages. This biomarker may probably enable tracking the effects of developmental and environmental influences, manipulations, and (preventive) treatments on individual deviations from species-specific brain aging trajectories in experimental mammal models across the life-course.