How much time you got left?

While it's easy to count our number of birthdays to figure out how long we've each been on the planet, researchers at Imperial College London have another age-related metric they think is even more important: A person's "brain age." That means taking into account the wear and tear on a person's brain to help predict individuals at greater risk of suffering poor health and dying earlier. And -- wouldn't you know it -- they've created a machine learning algorithm to help! "The study involves using brain MRI scans to look at the size of people's brain tissue -- gray matter and white matter -- across the lifespan," Dr. James Cole, a research associate who led the study, told Digital Trends. "By building a statistical model of brain volumes in N 2001 people aged 18-90, we can then compare new brain scans to get a prediction of someone's'brain age.' The idea is that if someone's brain appears'older' than their real chronological age, then this may be due to some damage or disease, or potentially indicates increased risk of future brain-health problems."