Department of Psychology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA.
Psychol Bull. 2011 Sep;137(5):753-84. doi: 10.1037/a0023262.
There are many reports of relations between age and cognitive variables and of relations between age and variables representing different aspects of brain structure and a few reports of relations between brain structure variables and cognitive variables. These findings have sometimes led to inferences that the age-related brain changes cause the age-related cognitive changes. Although this conclusion may well be true, it is widely recognized that simple correlations are not sufficient to warrant causal conclusions, and other types of correlational information, such as mediation and correlations between longitudinal brain changes and longitudinal cognitive changes, also have limitations with respect to causal inferences. These issues are discussed, and the existing results on relations of regional volume, white matter hyperintensities, and diffusion tensor imaging measures of white matter integrity to age and to measures of cognitive functioning are reviewed. It is concluded that at the current time the evidence that these aspects of brain structure are neuroanatomical substrates of age-related cognitive decline is weak. The final section contains several suggestions concerning measurement and methodology that may lead to stronger conclusions in the future.
有许多关于年龄与认知变量之间关系的报告，以及关于代表大脑结构不同方面的变量与认知变量之间关系的报告。这些发现有时导致这样的推断，即与年龄相关的大脑变化导致与年龄相关的认知变化。尽管这个结论很可能是正确的，但人们普遍认识到，简单的相关并不能证明因果关系，其他类型的相关信息，如中介和大脑纵向变化与认知纵向变化之间的相关性，对于因果推断也存在局限性。本文讨论了这些问题，并回顾了关于区域体积、脑白质高信号和弥散张量成像测量的白质完整性与年龄和认知功能测量之间关系的现有结果。结论是，目前，这些大脑结构方面是与年龄相关的认知能力下降的神经解剖学基础的证据还很薄弱。最后一部分包含了一些关于测量和方法的建议，这些建议可能会在未来得出更有力的结论。
