The speed at which regions of the brain mature during early adolescence can forecast the emergence of mental-health conditions up to four years before symptoms develop, according to a study of nearly 12,000 young people in the United States. By tracking the brains of adolescents over six years in nearly 30,000 scans, researchers mapped how the brain's outer layer, the cerebral cortex, thins as children grow into teenagers. The team observed that sensory areas of the cortex thinned, or matured, first, followed by regions responsible for complex thought. The findings, posted on 11 October on the preprint server bioRxiv1, ahead of peer review, challenge the theory that psychiatric disorders are caused by defects in specific brain circuits. Instead, they indicate that vulnerability to mental-health symptoms could involve disruption of the brain's developmental timeline and could be set in motion by genes that are active before birth. The work 'provides one of the clearest pictures yet...
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