Overview
- Published in Nature Communications, the cross-sectional analysis used diffusion MRI scans from participants aged 0 to 90 to infer changes in white‑matter connectivity.
- The team identified four major turning points around ages 9, 32, 66 and 83 that delineate childhood, adolescence, adulthood, early aging and late aging.
- Adolescent‑like reorganization persists until about 32, when network efficiency peaks and the study records the strongest shift in brain‑wiring trajectory.
- Between roughly 32 and 66, brain architecture stabilizes with increasing compartmentalization, aligning with prior evidence of a plateau in intelligence and personality.
- A mid‑60s transition features gradual connectivity loss and white‑matter degeneration risk, while around 83 the brain shifts from global to more local connectivity, with sparser data in this oldest group and noted links between wiring differences and mental‑health and neurological vulnerabilities.