Abstract
Neurological and psychiatric disorders are a burden on social and economic resources. Therefore, maintaining brain health and preventing these disorders are important. While the physiological functions of the brain are well studied, few studies have focused on keeping the brain healthy from a neuroscientific viewpoint. We propose a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based quotient for monitoring brain health, the Brain Healthcare Quotient (BHQ), which is based on the volume of gray matter (GM) and the fractional anisotropy (FA) of white matter (WM). We recruited 144 healthy adults to acquire structural neuroimaging data, including T1-weighted images and diffusion tensor images, and data associated with both physical (BMI, blood pressure, and daily time use) and social (subjective socioeconomic status, subjective well-being, post-materialism and Epicureanism) factors. We confirmed that the BHQ was sensitive to an age-related decline in GM volume and WM integrity. Further analysis revealed that the BHQ was critically affected by both physical and social factors. We believe that our BHQ is a simple yet highly sensitive, valid measure for brain health research that will bridge the needs of the scientific community and society and help us lead better lives in which we stay healthy, active, and sharp.
Highlights
Various mental illnesses currently affect millions of people, and enormous social and economic resources are spent to treat them [1]
The transmission efficiency of the network between brain regions is supported by white matter (WM) integrity, which is reflected in the fractional anisotropy (FA) of axons [14], as measured by diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Considering these observations, we propose an index for brain healthcare, the Brain Healthcare Quotient (BHQ), which includes two subordinate indices: the gray matter (GM)-BHQ based on the volume of GM, as assessed by voxel-based morphometry (VBM), and the FA-BHQ (WM-BHQ) based on the FA value of WM, as assessed by DTI
To confirm whether the GM-BHQ and FA-BHQ reflect age-related declines, we examined the association between the BHQs and age
Summary
Various mental illnesses currently affect millions of people, and enormous social and economic resources are spent to treat them [1]. The brain-behavior relationship has been gradually delineated for a wide range of mental illnesses, including neurological disorders (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease [4] and Parkinson’s disease [5]), psychiatric disorders (e.g., depressive disorder [6] and schizophrenia [7]) and developmental disorders (e.g., autism spectrum disorder [8]). Most of these studies have compared the brain structures or functions of patients with specific diagnoses with “healthy” participants.
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