London, Nov 30 (IANS): The human brain has a fragile spot for Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia, a study involving 484 healthy people aged between eight and 85 years has found.

The team of British researchers looked at how the brain naturally changes as people age.

The images revealed that parts of the brain that were the last to develop were also the first to show signs of age-related decline, BBC reported.

When the team led by Gwenaelle Douaud from Oxford analysed scans of patients with Alzheimer's disease and scans of patients with schizophrenia, they found the same brain regions were affected.

The findings show that Alzheimer's and schizophrenia are linked.

"Early doctors called schizophrenia 'premature dementia' but until now we had no clear evidence that the same parts of the brain might be associated with two such different diseases," professor Hugh Perry from the Medical Research Council was quoted as saying.

The detailed study provided previously missing links between development ageing and disease processes in the brain.

The findings appeared in the journal PNAS.