The last part of the brain’s grey matter to develop is often the first part to suffer illness, according to the findings of a major new study reported last night.
UK and European researchers found that the same region of the brain is linked to schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.
The one disease tends to occur in early adulthood while the other, Alzheimer’s, tends to appear later in life.
Researchers said their findings support a long-held theory that the last part of the brain to develop – and to have evolved – and is also the most vulnerable to early decline.
The two diseases might represent part of the "price" humanity pays for having high intelligence and consciousness, researchers said.
Researchers at Oxford University, UK, collected MRI scans of the brains of nearly 500 healthy people, ranging in age from eight to 85.
They say they found a network in the brain’s grey matter that is the last to develop and the first to degenerate in old age.
The project, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences also involved Imperial College, London, UK, together with the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland and the University of Oslo, Norway.
Researcher Dr Gwenaëlle Douaud said: "Our results show that the same specific parts of the brain not only develop more slowly, but also degenerate faster than other parts.
"These complex regions, which combine information coming from various senses, seem to be more vulnerable than the rest of the brain to both schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s, even though these two diseases have different origins and appear at very different, almost opposite, times of life."
Professor Hugh Perry, of the Medical Research Council, which backed the work, said: "Until now we had no clear evidence that the same parts of the brain might be associated with two such different diseases. This large-scale and detailed study provides an important, and previously missing, link between development, ageing and disease processes in the brain.
“It raises important issues about possible genetic and environmental factors that may occur in early life and then have lifelong consequences."
Douaud et al. A common brain network links development, aging, and vulnerability to disease. PNAS 25 November 2014 [abstract]
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