Collaborative neuroimaging initiative BrainChart helps chart how brains change across the lifespan

For decades, growth charts have been used by pae­di­a­tri­cians as ref­er­ence tools. The charts allow health pro­fes­sion­als to plot and mea­sure a child’s height and weight from birth to young adult­hood. The per­centile scores they pro­vide, espe­cial­ly across mul­ti­ple vis­its, help doc­tors screen for con­di­tions such as obe­si­ty or inad­e­quate growth, which fall at the…

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New book highlights continued brain development throughout adolescence, even into our 20s

_____ Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Probes Myths About the Teenage Brain (Edu­ca­tion Week): “We often think ear­ly child­hood is this dra­mat­ic win­dow of learn­ing and devel­op­ment in the brain, and you’re high­light­ing ado­les­cence as a dif­fer­ent kind of win­dow. Can you talk a lit­tle bit about that? I was told when I was an under­grad­u­ate that the human brain pretty…

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Study combines MRI brain scans with statistics to better predict cognitive problems after stroke

___ New ‘brain health index’ can pre­dict how well patients will do after stroke (Sci­enceDai­ly): “A new com­put­er pro­gramme devel­oped by sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ties of Edin­burgh and Glas­gow can assess whole brain dete­ri­o­ra­tion and help pre­dict cog­ni­tive func­tion after stroke up to ten times more accu­rate­ly than cur­rent meth­ods. The new approach, pub­lished today…

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Study combines neuroimaging with machine learning to predict, with 96% accuracy, whether high-risk 6‑month-old babies will develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD) by age 2

— A Sin­gle Brain Scan Has Been Used to Accu­rate­ly Pre­dict Autism at Just 6 Months Old (Sci­ence alert) “Researchers have used brain scans and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to spot dif­fer­ences in how key areas of infant brains syn­chro­nise, allow­ing them to accu­rate­ly pre­dict which babies would devel­op autism spec­trum dis­or­der (ASD) as a toddler…The research, led…

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Study: Structural brain differences due to childhood poverty may account for 20% of the academic achievement gap

. Brain scans reveal how pover­ty hurts chil­dren’s brains (Bloomberg): “Grow­ing up poor has long been linked to low­er aca­d­e­m­ic test scores. And there’s now mount­ing evi­dence that it’s part­ly because kids can suf­fer real phys­i­cal con­se­quences from low fam­i­ly incomes, includ­ing brains that are less equipped to learn.

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Study: MRI scan technicians can experience negative neurocognitive effects

MRI work­ers expe­ri­ence tran­sient neu­rocog­ni­tive effects (News Med­ical): “Indi­vid­u­als work­ing in the vicin­i­ty of mag­net­ic res­o­nance imag­ing (MRI) machines may expe­ri­ence tran­sient neu­rocog­ni­tive effects when mov­ing their heads, research demonstrates…Study par­tic­i­pants who com­plet­ed standardized 

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