[Cerebral atrophy and ventricular enlargement in physiological ageing--a morphometrical study in 28 autopsy brain of normal old people].
It is generally agreed that the adult human brain shows atrophy with advance of ageing. Although this phenomenon has been confirmed, mainly by measurement on CT images, there were only a few studies on brains over the age of 70 years. We measured the cranial cavity volume brain volume and ventricular volume in 28 normal autopsy brains of from 63 to 96 years of age (mean 81.4 years). We found that the ratio between the brain volume and the cranial cavity volume (B/C ratio), and the ratio between the ventricular volume and the brain volume (V/B ratio), had no significant correlation to age (B/C ratio: r = 0.22, p = 0.28, V/B ratio; r = 0.13, p = 0.50). Although our results are compatible with the previous studies on very old people, they are different from those on middle aged and presenile people. We considered that the cerebral atrophy become far less marked after 70 years of age.
Yamada
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S
Department of Neuropathology, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Japan.
Asano
T
T
Mizutani
T
T
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology*; D000886:Anthropometry; D001284:Atrophy; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D002552:Cerebral Ventricles / Q000473:pathology*; D004108:Dilatation, Pathologic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values