title: Relationship among neuroimaging indices of cerebral health during normal aging.
abstract: Sensitive measures of brain aging show great promise for gauging factors that affect aging and degenerative processes, such as risk genes or therapy. Here we examined age-related trends for three indices of cerebral health: gyral gray matter (GM) thickness, dilation of sulcal spaces with CSF, and the volume of T2-hyperintense white matter (HWM) lesions. The study involved 31 healthy adults age 57-82 years old. Measurements of average GM thickness, average sulcal span and HWM volume were performed using high-resolution 3D T1- and T2-weighted brain MR images. Age-related trends for the three cerebral health indices were consistent with previously published work though the analysis of their covariance led to a previously unreported relationship. Simultaneous multiple regression found that dilation of cortical sulci were primarily (t = 2.59, P < 0.01) related to the increases in HWM volume and secondarily related (t = -2.51, P < 0.01) to the reductions of the cortical GM thickness. The are-corrected correlation between reduction in GM thickness and increases in HWM volume, was not significant (P = 0.34). These findings are of interest in designing quantitative measures of brain aging for monitoring individual patients and in large-scale clinical trials.
authors.affiliation: Research Imaging Center, University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas 78284, USA. kochunov@uthscsa.edu
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kochunov
authors.forename: Paul M
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.forename: Thomas R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Coyle
authors.forename: Jack L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Lancaster
authors.forename: Valeria
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kochunov
authors.forename: Donal
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Royall
authors.forename: Jean-Fransçois
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Mangin
authors.forename: Denis
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rivière
authors.forename: Peter T
authors.initials: PT
authors.lastname: Fox
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000473:pathology*; D001284:Atrophy / Q000209:etiology / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000473:pathology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D003704:Dementia / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology; D018450:Disease Progression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged