MRI Studies Tracking Impact of Teenage Experience

Researchers have recently been studying what MRIs show in people with advanced dementia, Alzheimer’s and psychiatric conditions, like can a particular neurological feature spotted on the MRI make someone more susceptible to autism or more likely to be a Nobel prize winner. The issue with these studies has regularly been that the number of people in them is low, like 12 or 20, so drawing conclusions is difficult, and funding larger studies is costly. But there have been advances in designing studies to look at more substantial data. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Study enrolled nearly 12,000 nine to 10 year olds whose brains will be scanned regularly into young adulthood. The study will track parent income, psychological attributes (such as resilience during stressful situations, like divorce) to see how they intertwine with brain development.