The study did not look at men and women separately, but there will be questions such as the impact of menopause.
Duncan Astle, professor of neuroinformatics at the University of Cambridge, said: “Many neurodevelopmental, mental health and neurological conditions are linked to the way the brain is wired. Indeed, differences in brain wiring predict difficulties with attention, language, memory, and a whole host of different behaviours.”
Prof Tara Spires-Jones, director of the centre for discovery brain sciences at the University of Edinburgh, said: “This is a very cool study highlighting how much our brains change over our lifetimes.”
She said the results “fit well” with our understanding of brain ageing, but cautioned “not everyone will experience these network changes at exactly the same ages”.
