Staring at a white cross on a board in front of me, I soon discover that the hardest thing about having my brain activity measured is resisting the urge to fall asleep. I must sit still for 10 minutes while the magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanner works its magic, with small coils attached to my head to help the machine precisely locate me. It feels a bit like sitting in an old-fashioned salon hair dryer.

Wearing comfortable clothing and no metal, I have come to Aston University in Birmingham to discover my brain age. The technology here has been used to launch the world’s first consumer MEG brain scanning service developed by ambitious start-up MYndspan. For £600, anyone can book a slot in the machine and receive a fascinating insight into their brain connectivity and cognitive health. 

Fitness trackers, smart watches and even jewellery that measures vital signs are booming in popularity, with more health data at our fingertips than ever before for those who want it. Myndspan’s chief executive, Caitlin Baltzer, believes brain health should be no exception and this technology should be “as accessible as possible, coming to every city, so that everyone can get a scan” in the same way that we have regular check-ups at the dentist.

However, critics have suggested that rolling out commercial brain scans could cause unnecessary anxiety and add to pressure on GP services from people worried about their results. So is it a valuable, empowering experience or a gimmick? I’m keen to find out.

According to Caitlin, MYndspan attracts two types of people: the “worried well” and those who are at higher risk of suffering head injuries, such as athletes.

Jacob Oliver, 20, is among the latter. As a scrum half with the Newcastle Falcons who has played for England under-19s and under-20s squads, he has taken his fair share of knocks including two concussions.

He tells me: “Everyone knows what they’re getting themselves into with rugby. There are certain aspects of your body that aren’t going to function as well as they did before you played, especially if you’ve got a long career at the professional level.

“That’s something that we all sign up for. But I think with head injuries there are more preventative measures that could be put in place.”

Jacob had his first scan with MYndspan a few years ago and another after his most recent concussion. He says the experience was much more pleasant than MRI scans, which are “ridiculously noisy and go on forever”.

The latest scan gave him a brain age of 23 — around three years older than his chronological age. He is not sure "if it’s a negative or positive” but his medical team were able to compare the results to his previous scan to check for worrying changes in brain function.

Jacob adds: “I could see straight away that there was no major impact and nothing concerning. That gave me the peace of mind to return to training.” The young athlete believes the technology could be “revolutionary” and should form part of a mandatory monitoring programme. 

“We’re learning more about concussions, CTE and the knock-on effects for brain health,” he says. “We all have our hearts scanned every season. I don’t understand why it’s not the same with your brain."

I am no elite sportsperson and have never suffered a head injury. But I have a notoriously poor memory and, with a history of dementia on both sides of my family, I am eager to see what the test has to say about my brain.

Upon arriving at the Aston Institute of Health & Neurodevelopment, I’m asked to complete a questionnaire and some gamified tests. The survey asks about my sleep habits and nutrition, including how many varieties of fruit and vegetables I eat each week.

The tests include grammatical reasoning and a game where I must identify whether two complex shapes are the same or different.

Then, MEG manager Sian Worthen asks me to put on a pair of glasses to help her position the coils — and it is time for the scan. Sian guides me through the process over a two-way intercom, while a screen outside the room displays squiggly lines.

Unlike MRIs which collect structural information and create images of the brain, MEG scans use sensors to detect the magnetic activity of neurons, visualised as brain waves.

They are commonly used to plan brain surgeries for epilepsy and tumour removal, as they can pinpoint the exact location where seizures originate.

Once the scan is complete, it takes around 24 hours for MYndspan to generate my report. The company’s experts compare my scan to its database to estimate my brain age and determine whether my function is above or below average in different areas.

When the report lands in my inbox, my heart drops. My functional brain age is 40.5 — a staggering 11 years older than my chronological age of 29.

I show the results to my dad and he consults Google. “It looks likes you might die prematurely, maybe after the age of 80,” he tells me. “But 80’s a good age, isn’t it?” Thanks, dear father.

Fighting back a feeling of panic, I read through the rest of my results. My cognitive score is 101, pretty much bang on the average, and my brain wave analysis is average for all regions and wavelengths. So why is my brain apparently a decade older than it should be?

Luckily, MYndspan’s chief scientific officer Dr Ben Dunkley is on hand to offer a more expert interpretation of the findings. During a call a few days later, he says my brain age is “not anything to be concerned about”.

“There’s a window of error around the chronological age of plus four years and minus four years. Within that window there’s a degree of model error. So you’re really around six years outside of where we would estimate… small in the grand scheme of things.”

Possible reasons for my elevated brain age include having a stressful job, Dr Dunkley says. Lifestyle factors can also play a role — and I have “room for improvement” there. My body mass index is a little higher than I would like and my nutritional index is in the lower third, although my sleep score is very healthy.

Dr Dunkley adds: “With a little bit of prolonged, not necessarily intervention but modifiable lifestyle factors, you can absolutely bring that down. Brain activity is very susceptible to stress and things like that but can be rectified quite quickly.”

MYndspan’s report comes with a disclaimer that its scans are not intended to make clinical diagnoses and it does not provide medical advice. But repeat scans can identify changes in brain function that could require further investigation.

Dr Dunkley says access to this type of data can also motivate people to make small changes that benefit brain health. “It doesn’t necessarily make people worried,” he adds. 

“Democratising access to information is the ultimate goal. Five or ten years ago, wearables weren’t such a thing, now we all track our heart rate variability, sleep patterns and cardiovascular health.

“From my own experience, getting a Fitbit and maybe exercising more, seeing that my resting heart rate goes down. That’s been recommended for years by doctors but I never really paid any attention until I had access to that data.”

It is a compelling argument, but not one that all experts agree with. Dr Richard Bethlehem, director of neuroimaging at Cambridge University’s Autism Research Centre, tells me research into estimating brain age is still in the “early stages”.

To understand brain health, he says, “I’m partial to saying we would need something like an MRI scan because it gives us a lot of spatial resolution. It’s certainly the technology that’s used to assess neurodegeneration.

“But it’s also prohibitively expensive and cumbersome to put someone in a brain scanner, whereas putting on an energy cap is a little bit more pragmatic.”

Consumer MEG scans are a “novelty”, Dr Bethlehem adds, but he worries that they could create anxiety “over something that is not fully understood yet”.

“I don’t think anyone really knows what it means to have an older brain age than your actual age, for example. It’s a little bit premature to maybe push it out to the general public that way without having a very clear strategy for what to say when someone asks, ‘What does it mean if I’m older or younger?’

“It’s a really interesting field of research, to see what an accelerated or delayed brain age could indicate. But I think we’re in the early stages of trying to understand that.”

However, Caitlin firmly rebuts any suggestion that MYndspan’s work amounts to scaremongering. She says: “These scanners are incredibly powerful. They’ve been around for 40 years.

“There’s tonnes of research, both clinical and in cognitive neuroscience, to say that when you’re mapping the brain with millisecond to millimetre accuracy like this scanner does, you can start to identify these brain connectivity patterns indicative of health but also disease and disfunction.”

Her company’s mission, she adds, is to “show people that they have the power to change this” and prevent problems in later life. “No one wants to wait until they’re dependent on a healthcare service to fix them. We want to prevent it from getting to that point in the first place.

“The earlier you identify these things, the earlier you can treat them. Our whole name comes from the fact that we want people to be able to extend the healthy lifespan of their mind.” MYndspan is now crowdfunding to expand its service and will launch a flagship centre in London later this year.

So, what’s my verdict? I am not entirely sure what to make of my 40.5-year-old brain age but I am tempted to return in six months’ time for another scan to see if I can improve it.

Dr Dunkley identified several areas in which my lifestyle could be improved. Most were things I probably knew already, but my scan result is strong motivation to finally make some changes. Whether this technology is going to lead to a brain health revolution or not, that can surely only be a good thing.