How does BrainYears™ compare to MRI and fMRI-based brain age assessments?

There are two distinct MRI-based approaches to brain age, and they measure different things:

Structural MRI measures brain anatomy — the physical size and shape of brain structures like the hippocampus and cortex. Structural brain age models compare these measurements against age-matched norms to estimate how old your brain looks. This is valuable for detecting anatomical damage, but structural changes are downstream of functional changes. By the time brain volume has visibly decreased on an MRI, functional loss has been accumulating for years. You are seeing the aftermath, not the process.

Functional MRI (fMRI) measures blood flow changes in the brain, typically while a person performs a task or rests in the scanner. fMRI can reveal which brain regions are active and how they interact. It is a powerful research tool. However, fMRI measures blood oxygenation as a proxy for neural activity — not the electrical activity itself — with a time resolution of seconds, not milliseconds. It also requires a large, stationary scanner, making it expensive ($1,000–$5,000+ per scan), episodic, and impractical for repeated tracking.

BrainYears™ measures the brain’s electrical responses directly, at one-millisecond precision, during a controlled cognitive task. This captures the speed and efficiency of neural processing — the functional changes that precede structural decline by years, sometimes decades. It achieves accuracy matching MRI-derived brain age clocks (MAE 4.4 years), from a portable wearable device, in 15 minutes, with results available immediately. And unlike either form of MRI, the same system that measures brain age can deliver neurofeedback and photobiomodulation protocols to improve it.

Both structural MRI and fMRI remain valuable for their specific purposes. BrainYears™ is not a replacement for either. As a wellness tool, it fills a different gap: precise, repeatable, functional brain age measurement that is accessible enough for quarterly tracking and actionable enough to track response to protocols.