How Brain Scans Determine Cognitive Decline

Name: How Brain Scans Determine Cognitive Decline
Uploaded: 2024-11-13T13:00:44+00:00
Duration: 47 s
Channel: Dr. Charles Mok
Description: A short explanatory monologue describing how the brain loses mass and cerebrospinal fluid volume increases with age; the speaker uses a broccoli vs…

13 Nov 2024 · 1 min

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0:47

A short explanatory monologue describing how the brain loses mass and cerebrospinal fluid volume increases with age; the speaker uses a broccoli vs cauliflower metaphor to contrast younger vs older CT appearances. The video explains that modern imaging can estimate a brain's age relative to same-age/gender peers and that higher brain mass (higher percentile) is protective against neurocognitive decline.

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So when we're very young, our brain has a lot of brain mass and very little liquid, what we call cerebral spinal fluid. And as we age the brain shrinks and cerebral spinal liquid takes up the space. And then when I was in say medical school and some of you have seen CT scan the brain, you see that the brain is shrunken down, looks more like cauliflower. And when it's a younger brain it looks like broccoli. It's got real smooth edges where the cauliflower, the rough edges is more the age brain. And now with imaging we can determine the the age of the brain relative to same age and gender of other people. With brain scans you want to have a high amount of brain mass and a lower amount of brain volume to assure you're not going to get neurocognitive decline. So the percentile could be, you know, 99 percentile for your age or it can be 1 percentile for your age which would be bad.