Elsevier

Neurobiology of Aging

Volume 26, Issue 9, October 2005, Pages 1279-1282
Neurobiology of Aging

Commentary
Neuroanatomical aging: Universal but not uniform

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2005.05.018Get rights and content

Section snippets

Patterns in brain aging

At least two premises must be met for MRI techniques to be informative: (1) there must be a set of identifiable regularities that can be identified by means of such techniques and (2) these regularities must be of some significance for human functioning. During the last 15 years some inconsistencies have been reported in brain aging research, but the first premise has partly been shown to hold true. Two relatively large new morphometric studies, Allen et al., and ours, Walhovd et al. ([1], [30]

Neuroanatomical aging in a neuropsychological perspective: how does it add up?

We agree with Allen et al. [1] in that data on volumetric brain aging ultimately should help us understand normal age-related changes in cognition from a biological perspective. As noted above, this is a premise, which must be fulfilled for MRI techniques to be truly informative in aging. However, in view of the age functions observed for structures such as the hippocampus, which is assumed to support memory capacity, this seems to be a highly complex task. De facto, sharply curvilinear or

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References (32)

Cited by (22)

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  • The impact of aging on gray matter structural covariance networks

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    It has been well established that healthy aging is associated with anatomical changes in the brain. Although the majority of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have shown that significant anatomical variability exists within the senior population (Raz and Rodrigue, 2006; Walhovd et al., 2005), a common pattern of atrophy in the prefrontal cortex (Lemaitre et al., 2012; Raz et al., 1997, 2005; Tisserand et al., 2002, 2004) and the medial temporal lobe (Bigler et al., 2002; Du et al., 2006; Tisserand et al., 2004) has been consistently reported when comparing older and younger adults. In particular, these anatomical changes have been associated with an age-related decline in executive functions (Cardenas et al., 2011; Du et al., 2006) and episodic memory (Pardo et al., 2007; Petersen et al., 2000; Rusinek et al., 2003), respectively.

  • FreeSurfer

    2012, NeuroImage
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    It has been used to improve our understanding of an array of neurological disorders (Becker et al., 2008; Desikan et al., 2010a,b; Dickerson et al., 2009; Gold et al., 2005; Kuperberg et al., 2003; Manoach et al., 2007; Milad et al., 2005; Oliveira et al., 2010; Rauch et al., 2005; Rosas et al., 2002, 2005, 2006, 2010; Sabuncu et al., 2011; Sailer et al., 2003; Stufflebeam et al., 2011), the genetic basis of neuroanatomical variability and change (Kremen et al., 2010; Panizzon et al., 2009), as well as healthy development (Isaacs et al., 2008; Martinussen et al., 2005) and aging (Fjell et al., 2005, 2006; Salat et al., 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2009; Walhovd et al., 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2006).

  • Normal age-related brain morphometric changes: Nonuniformity across cortical thickness, surface area and gray matter volume?

    2012, Neurobiology of Aging
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    In vivo studies using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) have consistently shown an age-related decrease in GM and WM volume concomitant with an increase in CSF volume (Courchesne et al., 2000; Good et al., 2001; Lemaitre et al., 2005; Raz et al., 1997; Smith et al., 2007; Walhovd et al., 2005). Studies looking at the effect of age using either manual drawing of regions of interest (ROI) (Allen et al., 2005; Raz et al., 1997; Raz et al., 2004) or automated/semi-automated methods, such as voxel-based morphometry (VBM) (Good et al., 2001; Smith et al., 2007; Tisserand et al., 2002) have reported regionally variable vulnerability to aging across the whole brain (Raz et al., 2006; Walhovd et al., 2005). The literature related to regional heterogeneity in age-related changes in brain morphometry can be grouped into two categories based on the regions involved.

  • Consistent neuroanatomical age-related volume differences across multiple samples

    2011, Neurobiology of Aging
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    Cerebellum: Five studies have found negative age relationships for total cerebellar volume, cerebellar GM, cerebellar WM, or other cerebellar compartments (Jernigan et al., 2001; Liu et al., 2003; Luft et al., 1999; Raz et al., 2001; Sullivan et al., 2000; Walhovd et al., 2005a). In one study, no effects on cerebellar WM (Sullivan et al., 2000) were found, in contrast to a more recent study (Walhovd et al., 2005b). One study observed that the age changes were best described by an exponential fit (Luft et al., 1999).

  • Age-related differences in regional brain volumes: A comparison of optimized voxel-based morphometry to manual volumetry

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    However, when manually measured intracranial volume was used as a covariate, the sex differences all but disappeared. This finding reinforces the recommendation to use an extra-cerebral index such as manually or semi-automatically traced intracranial vault volume as a covariate for head size correction (Walhovd et al., 2005). In the context of an aging brain study, the possibility of sexually dimorphic age trajectories warrants attention.

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