You may be 40 years old, but could your brain already be showing signs of accelerated aging? New research involving more than 18,000 people suggests that the answer may depend on much more than genetics or your date of birth.

and social environmental conditions were associated with different aspects of brain aging.

Physical environmental factors showed stronger associations with structural measures, including regions involved in memory, movement, and emotional processing.

Social environmental factors were more closely associated with functional brain-network measurements.

These findings support the idea that brain health is influenced

by a complex combination of biological, environmental, and social conditions.

However, the study was observational. It cannot prove that any individual exposure directly caused accelerated brain aging.

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