Skip to main content

Computer-generated ‘brain age’ estimates how much time you’ve got left

what is the mandela effect brain stock photo
Tatiana Shepeleva/123RF
While it’s easy to count our number of birthdays to figure out how long we’ve each been on the planet, researchers at Imperial College London have another age-related metric they think is even more important: A person’s “brain age.”

That means taking into account the wear and tear on a person’s brain to help predict individuals at greater risk of suffering poor health and dying earlier. And — wouldn’t you know it — they’ve created a machine learning algorithm to help!

“The study involves using brain MRI scans to look at the size of people’s brain tissue — gray matter and white matter — across the lifespan,” Dr. James Cole, a research associate who led the study, told Digital Trends. “By building a statistical model of brain volumes in N = 2001 people aged 18-90, we can then compare new brain scans to get a prediction of someone’s ‘brain age.’ The idea is that if someone’s brain appears ‘older’ than their real chronological age, then this may be due to some damage or disease, or potentially indicates increased risk of future brain-health problems.”

In an article published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, Imperial College researchers compared older brain scans, with lower levels of gray and white matter, to those of healthy individuals. The study included approximately 50 percent males and females, representing a broad range of ages.

People with older-looking brains typically had weaker grip, poorer lung function, and slower walking speed, in addition to lesser cognitive performance. The researchers also demonstrated that the difference between brain age and real age significantly relates to how long people live, proven by testing the algorithm on historical data sets of MRI data.

“Excitingly, when combining brain age with other potential aging biomarkers, such as the epigenetic clock, [we were able to improve] the accuracy with which mortality could be predicted,” Cole continued. “In the long run, MRI scans could be used as part of the clinical assessment to look for people at increased risk of poor brain and general health outcomes.”

Sure, an algorithm that tells you when you’re going to die isn’t going to be to everyone’s idea of a good time. But if it opens up the possibility of modifying your health to improve your estimated lifespan, this could prove to be just the wake-up call some folks need.

Although Cole told us that right now it’s still, “a long way from being a clinical tool” used by physicians.

Luke Dormehl
I'm a UK-based tech writer covering Cool Tech at Digital Trends. I've also written for Fast Company, Wired, the Guardian…
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more