When we think about staying healthy as we age, the heart, the joints, and the waistline tend to get most of the attention. The Brain, the one organ we truly can’t do without, often gets left out of the conversation. That’s a big part of why we’ve incorporated brain health into our LONGEVITY PLUS offerings. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at two tools, BrainKey and Creyos, and explore how each provides a window into how your brain functions.
Same Organ: Two Different Windows
The simplest way to understand these tools is to look at your brain from two different angles. One looks at the structure of your brain; the other looks at how well it works. Together, they give a fuller picture than either does alone.
BrainKey is built around an MRI scan. It takes the images from that scan and uses software to turn them into a labeled, three-dimensional view of your brain. From there, it calculates what it calls a “brain age,” which is essentially a comparison of your brain to that of others your age and sex. If your brain looks structurally younger or older than your years, this is where we would see it. Because it’s working from an actual MRI, it can also flag structural findings that wouldn’t otherwise be on anyone’s radar.
Creyos takes a more functional approach. There’s no scan involved. Instead, you complete a series of short, game-like tasks on a tablet or computer – twelve of them in a full battery, each only a couple of minutes long. The test measures things like memory, attention, reasoning, and verbal ability. Your results get compared against a large normative database so we can see where you land relative to people in your age group. It grew out of decades of neuroscience research and has been used in hundreds of published studies, but in practice it feels less like a medical test and more like a focused set of brain exercises.
BrainKey tells us what your brain looks like. Creyos tells us how it performs. One is anatomy; the other is function.
Who might want to consider them?
These aren’t tests everyone needs, and we’d never suggest otherwise. But there are a few situations where they tend to be genuinely useful.
The most common reason is simple curiosity paired with a long-term mindset: people who are already thinking about longevity and want a baseline now, while everything is healthy. This allows them to have something to compare against in five or ten years. A brain-age number or a cognitive score doesn’t mean much in isolation, but it becomes far more meaningful when we can watch the trend over time.
If you’ve noticed changes in your own memory or focus and want more than a gut feeling, these tools can help bring clarity. It helps us determine whether there’s a measurable issue or simply the everyday mental fog that comes with stress, poor sleep, or a busy schedule.
What are these tools’ limitations?
The most important thing to understand is that these are tools, not diagnoses. A brain-age score or a cognitive percentile is a data point. It’s a useful, structured, comparable data point, but it doesn’t, by itself, tell us that you have a condition, or that you don’t. Plenty of perfectly healthy people score below average on a given task on a given day, and plenty of meaningful problems don’t show up on a single screening. Numbers like these are most valuable as a starting point for a conversation, not as a verdict.
That’s especially true of anything that looks abnormal. An unexpected result, whether it’s a lower-than-expected cognitive score or a structural finding on the MRI, does not mean something is wrong. It means something is worth a closer look. We can then put the result in the context of your overall health, your history, and the rest of your picture.
The MRI side of BrainKey deserves a specific mention, because it cuts both ways. The upside is real: a scan can occasionally catch something asymptomatic and important early, when it’s most treatable. But the flip side is equally real. MRIs of healthy people sometimes turn up incidental findings, often small, usually harmless things. This can lead to more imaging, more specialist visits, and a fair amount of worry before everything turns out to be fine. Neither of these outcomes is a reason to avoid the scan. They’re simply reasons to go in with clear eyes.
What does it cost?
We’ve tried to keep this straightforward for our members. For the full BrainKey assessment, the cost is $950, which breaks down into the ProScan MRI ($500) and the BrainKey analysis of those images ($450). For Creyos, the cognitive assessment is $100 for members.
You’re welcome to do one or both, and we encourage you to discuss this with your physician. Some people start with Creyos because it’s simple, inexpensive, and can add the MRI later if it makes sense. Others want the structural picture from the onset; there’s no single right order.
The bottom line
Brain health is one of the most meaningful things you can pay attention to as you age. For a long time there weren’t many good ways to look at it before symptoms appeared. BrainKey and Creyos are two reasonable ways to start, and we’re glad to be able to offer them.
What protects your brain over time is the unglamorous work of sleep, exercise, blood pressure and metabolic control. These tests are data that help inform that work; they don’t replace it. Their real value comes from what we do with the results together, collaboratively with your physician: setting a baseline, watching changes over time, and deciding what, if anything, is worth prioritizing. If you’re curious whether either of these makes sense for you, talk with your physician.
