Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Neurobiol Aging. 2010 Dec;31(12):2179-80. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.06.026. Epub 2010 Sep 15.
Individual differences in cognitive aging are, in some cases, correlated with changes in molecular markers at the neuronal level. However, the use of simple correlations to analyze data across multiple age groups has a number of potential pitfalls. When young animals differ from aged animals on both of the dependent variables being assessed with a correlation analysis, the age difference often accounts for the detection of a relationship between the 2 measures. When the age groups are analyzed discretely, the data may exhibit a completely different trend, as suggested in a recent Commentary. In addition to reconsidering the interpretation of recently published data on the relationship between age-related deficits in cognition and hippocampal neurogenesis, the demands of the task should be taken into account when evaluating the contributions of newly-generated neurons.
认知老化的个体差异在某些情况下与神经元水平的分子标记物的变化相关。然而，使用简单的相关性分析来跨多个年龄组分析数据存在许多潜在的陷阱。当年轻动物和老年动物在使用相关性分析进行评估的两个因变量上都存在差异时，年龄差异通常解释了这两个测量值之间关系的检测。当对年龄组进行离散分析时，数据可能会呈现出完全不同的趋势，正如最近的一篇评论所建议的那样。除了重新考虑最近发表的关于认知与海马神经发生之间与年龄相关的缺陷关系的数据的解释之外，在评估新产生的神经元的贡献时，还应该考虑任务的要求。
