Maxwell ElliottAssistant Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota
Some older adults develop dementia and disability around retirement. Others keep exceptional cognitive function into their 90s. I study these individual differences in cognitive and brain aging.
I’m recruiting PhD students and a postdocI use cohort studies and large datasets to find, across whole populations, who ages well and who doesn’t.
1,037 people born in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1972–73 and assessed from birth to age 45, including brain MRI at 45. Following one cohort for decades shows who ages fast, who ages slow, and what came before.
Brain-age in midlife is associated with accelerated biological aging and cognitive decline in a longitudinal birth cohortMolecular Psychiatry, 2021About half a million UK adults, aged 40 to 69 when they joined in 2006–2010, with brain imaging for a large subset. It lets measures built in one cohort be tested in very large samples.
The Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative has followed older adults with and without cognitive impairment since 2004, with repeated brain scans.
In tandem, I study smaller, informative groups in depth, to improve how we measure aging and to test targeted hypotheses.
Measurement error in a single standard scan can hide real change in one person’s brain.
Instead of one long scan, many rapid scans in a single session, combined into a more precise measurement.
Precision brain morphometry using cluster scanningImaging Neuroscience, 2024Measured precisely at both ends, brain aging differs between people even across a single year.
Precision estimates of longitudinal brain aging capture unexpected individual differences in one yearNature Communications, 2026A single brain image can estimate a person’s longitudinal Pace of Aging, a measure developed in the Dunedin Study.
DunedinPACNI estimates the longitudinal Pace of Aging from a single brain image to track health and diseaseNature Aging, 2025Throughout my work, I look for critical windows in the lifespan for prevention and treatment. Much of it looks at midlife, decades before dementia usually appears.
Nature Communications
Nature Aging
Within-individual precision mapping of brain networks exclusively using task data
Neuron
Precision brain morphometry using cluster scanning
Imaging Neuroscience
Molecular Psychiatry
Psychological Science
I’m recruiting at the University of Minnesota. If my work interests you, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
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Through the Clinical Science and Psychopathology Research program (my primary appointment) or Personality, Individual Differences, and Behavior Genetics.
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Email me and we can discuss further.
