The £600 scan that could tell you how old your brain is
It has never been easier to understand the health of your own body. Want to find out how many calories you burn each day, or how much deep sleep you get at night? Wear a fitness tracker. Curious about the state of your gut? Send a stool sample off to a health company like Zoe, and you'll receive an inventory of the microbes jiving away in your intestines. Yet despite all of these advances in personal medicine, our brains remain largely unexplored territory.
That was until now. A team of British-based scientists and inventors have developed a system that could reveal more about the health of your brain than any other tool, next to the serious MRI scans you might be offered by your doctor. Myndspan, partnered with Aston University's Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment, is a company that promises to provide you with an accurate brain 'age' based on a reading of your brain waves and a series of cognitive tests, along with a consultation to explain all of the findings, for a total of £600.
Most of the service's users so far have been 'the worried well, who want to understand what's going on in their brains but have no cause for concern when they come in for a scan,' says Caitlin Baltzer, Myndspan's founder and chief executive. Its technology is of most use to those whose concerns for their brain health are immediate, however. Combat veterans, sports people and people diagnosed with PTSD or other serious mental illnesses have used Myndspan too, 'to track the health of their brains over time and understand how close they are to recovery'.
Like most of us, I had absolutely no idea what was going on inside my head. I try my best to live healthily, but I do have a family history of dementia, and the earliest signs of cognitive decline can appear in your 20s. Was my brain still ship-shape, or were things already going wrong? I wanted to know, so I booked myself in for an assessment.
How it works
What you get from a scan at Myndspan is different from what you'd find in a hospital scan. For one, most of us only get to explore what's inside of our heads when there are symptoms of a serious problem such as brain damage or a tumour. For the average person, one of Myndspan's tests is an explorative measure that's meant to help you learn more about its function day-to-day.
There are two parts to a 45-minute appointment. First you're asked to do a series of cognitive tests on an iPad, in a room by yourself. These are games measure the 'cognitive output' of your brain as it chugs away, says Baltzer. This also requires you to give up some 'metadata': age, weight, height and sex, so that you can be compared with the some 600 people who have undergone Myndspan's testing before, along with some data from the wider population.
The second is the actual scan or MEG (magnetoencephalography). Unlike an MRI scan, which uses magnetic fields to generate an image of your brain, an MEG 'directly measures the electronic activity generated by your brain, by picking up the magnetic fields that this creates,' says Dr Ben Dunkley, Myndspan's chief scientific officer. Also unlike an MRI, MEG machines are silent, you can sit upright in them and there are none of the unpleasant noises you have to deal with inside of an MRI machine. MEG scans have been used for decades for research into how our brains function, and are also used in medical settings across much of the world, though they are less commonly found on the NHS. This data is combined with your cognitive tests to map what's going on inside your brain.
The reading took just 10 minutes. Here is what I learnt.
How old is my brain?
My brain is 26.9 years old. The doctor explains that this is a good outcome compared with my actual age of 24. 'Some people can have discrepancies as big as 20 years,' says Dr Dunkley. 'That could be indicative of very poor lifestyle habits, of brain damage, or of illnesses like post-traumatic stress disorder. He explains that the way you treat your body will ultimately shape the health of your brain. And the aim is to have a brain age that's 'as close as possible to your biological age'.
The age of your brain isn't static, however. 'It's amazing how plastic your brain is, even into your 50s, 60s and beyond,' Dr Dunkley says. People who find that their brains are much older than they had imagined can bring that number down over time, by exercising, getting enough sleep, and avoiding sugary or processed foods that can cause inflammation.
As part of my report, I was given a score out of a hundred for my diet, and out of 27 for my sleep quality, based on a short quiz at the start of my appointment. I get 'just enough sleep' on average each night to be healthy, around seven hours, notes Dr Dunkley, a sign that I should really get more rest. My nutritional index score of 63 showed that I broadly eat about as well as the average person, but that I do have a sweet tooth, and the inflammation this causes can damage your brain's health over time. I resolved to cut down on sugary treats and prioritise a full night's sleep more often.
How good is my memory?
In the 10 minutes that my brain activity was measured, I showed slightly above-normal gamma wave activity, which is the sort that happens when you're trying to process information and remember things, and slightly sub-normal beta wave activity, which takes place when you're trying to think clearly and solve problems. But none of that was unique enough to move me out of the 'average' category, said Dr Dunkley.
That's no bad thing. When it comes to the sort of waves that your brain generates in a resting state like an MEG scan, it's best to be as 'average' as possible. This is an indicator of good health (even if you might be disappointed not to discover that you have extra-nimble thinking skills, as evidenced by above-average connectivity across the whole of your brain).
A marked abnormality in one part of your brain here can show that 'someone has experienced brain damage, or that a part of lifestyle is putting their brain health at risk, like playing rugby or another contact sport,' says Dr Dunkley. Someone who has experienced a traumatic event might have more activity in the parts of their brains that process fear or anxiety than the average person. Someone with a concussion or brain damage to a specific part of their head might show less.
At times, this is crucial validation for people who've 'had a concussion, and are told that they're fine but don't quite feel normal again,' explains Dr Dunkley. MEG scans can also go where doctors can't: they can reveal to veterans 'which of their symptoms are because of the post-traumatic stress they're enduring, and which are because of an event that might have happened at the same time that caused brain damage too,' Baltzer says.
Am I clever?
Ever wondered how smart you are compared to other people? In some ways, Myndspan reveals this too. My tests generated a very middling cognitive score of 102 (in a range of 61 to 139). Apparently, I have better-than-average grammatical reasoning skills, but when it comes to my working memory, concentration and visuospatial processing abilities, I'm bang on average again.
Dr Dunkley says that your first attempt at these tests will usually generate 'an underestimate of your cognitive function,' as when people come in they're often tired from travel and a bit stressed out by the environment. The previous night I'd slept less well than usual, and was tired after a train journey up from London, both of which 'would have negatively impacted' my results here. But the real usefulness of a Myndspan scan is that you can come back and check your results in six months' time, to measure improvement in your brain health or, alternatively, to catch any cognitive decline.
This is where an MEG-test combo differs from an IQ test or an online intelligence quiz. Your scores can go up if you eat well, exercise and get enough sleep, and go down if you're chronically stressed, pulling all-nighters and drinking heavily. All of these contribute to your brain's age and your test performance. 'These scores also account for the effect of practice, so that people can get an accurate picture of their changing brain health when they come in for further scans,' Dr Dunkley explains.
A first baseline reading gives you a mark 'from which you can measure any early cognitive decline', he adds. 'If you start at a higher brain age but make healthy lifestyle changes, you can come back in six months, do another scan and see if they're paying off.' One scan alone can give some important clues. While there's no way to know how I might have scored five years ago, even my one 'baseline' scan is reassurance that I'm not experiencing any cognitive decline that could be an early warning sign of dementia. 'From this test, it certainly doesn't look like you have cause for worry,' says Dr Dunkley.
For others, however, 'normal' can be the information they need to prove that something has gone wrong. 'We have seen very high-performing people, for example who are high up in the military and should be exceptional across the board, who are told that their brain health is fine because their scores are good, yet they know that something has changed,' Dr Dunkley says. 'Using technology like this could help them to prove a cognitive decline, by evidencing the fact that previously, they scored in the highest percentiles for their cognitive function.'
The verdict
Yes it's expensive, but information is power. Understanding how well my brain is functioning has made me realise how important a healthy lifestyle is if I want my brain to continue working effectively as I age. If, like me, you have an increased risk of dementia, it could motivate you to change your bad habits.
We all have periods of heavy stress, bouts of depression, phases of drinking too much and eating too few vegetables. All of these are reasons why your brain could be elderly before its time. Seeing the cold facts of their impact on your most important organ is hugely enlightening. We all spend plenty of time worrying about how well our heart is pumping, and whether we're overweight. Surely it's time we give our brain the attention it deserves.
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