Havana, April 12 (RHC) --Four researchers from Cuba's Neurosciences Center are co-authors of an article published in the prestigious journal Nature, where the island contributed its databases to the human brain mapping project.
According to a press release, the work presents standardized reference tables for the development of the human brain throughout life, elaborated through the analysis of brain MRIs of more than 100,000 participants from all over the world and different age groups.
According to the article, the reference charts could be applied in the future for digital assessment of brain health and diagnosis of diseases at any age.
Currently, there are no standard benchmarks for quantifying the maturation and healthy aging of the human brain, unlike growth charts used to measure traits such as height and weight in children.
The result made it possible to detect patterns of changes in brain anatomy associated, for example, with predictions of a transition from a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment to one of Alzheimer's disease.
Graphs of normal brain development across the lifespan were also created, which could be used to generate "percentile scores" to determine whether an individual is on a standard trajectory.
The authors emphasize that substantial future research will be needed before these results can be put into clinical practice.