Pulse.

a daily field guide to health research that matters

◆ Console

‹ Thu · 2 Jul 2026
Promising but preliminary

Variations of global brain asymmetry are associated with aging and related diseases.

Brain asymmetry patterns measured from MRI may help estimate biological age and identify disease risk in aging populations.

This Science Advances study from Francks/Thompson labs quantifies global brain asymmetry patterns from large-scale neuroimaging, demonstrating systematic variation with aging and correlation with multiple age-related diseases. The findings suggest brain asymmetry could serve as a non-invasive imaging biomarker for biological age estimation and disease risk stratification in population aging research.

What the study was

Study design
Large-scale population neuroimaging analysis
Population
Large-scale population cohort with brain MRI data
Category
Diagnostics
Maturity
Exploratory
Journal
Science advances

Why it surfaced

Science Advances; Francks/Thompson (international neuroimaging leaders); brain asymmetry as aging biomarker is novel; large-scale population data.

A plain-language summary of published research — not medical advice. Talk to a clinician about your own care.