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Abstract The MNI152 template is widely regarded as a representative average brain in neuroimaging, computational modeling, and neuromodulation research; however, its fidelity as a true population mean has not been systematically evaluated. In this study, we compared the MNI152 6 th generation nonlinear template to 436 individual MRI from a publicly available dataset, including Asian, Black, and White participants. We quantified the gross brain dimensions and extracted the mean scaling, shear, and voxel-wise Jacobian determinants from the linear and nonlinear registrations between the template and each subject. Across all racial groups, the MNI152 brain exhibited substantially larger radii than the population means, with z-scores frequently exceeding 1.0. The linear scaling factors indicated consistent contraction of the template, and voxel-wise Jacobian fields revealed spatially heterogeneous deformations, demonstrating that the template differs from real brains in both size and shape. These findings suggest that the MNI152 template does not reflect the average morphology of contemporary population samples and that linear registration alone cannot resolve these discrepancies. Therefore, more robust and unbiased template-generation pipelines may be necessary for applications requiring anatomically accurate head models.