State Key Laboratory of Management and Control for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2014 Jan;35(1):238-47. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22168. Epub 2012 Sep 21.
When conceptualizing age-specific onsets and sex-specific characteristics of neuropsychiatric diseases in a neurobiological context, it may be crucially important to consider differential trajectories of aging. Here, we investigated effects of age, sex, and their interactions on absolute and relative volumes of subcortical structures with known involvement in psychiatric disorders, including the basal ganglia, thalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala. Structural MRI data of 76 healthy subjects (38 males, 19-70 years) from the ICBM database were analyzed. Age-related absolute atrophy was generally found in the basal ganglia and thalamus, while in the hippocampus decline was only observed in males, and was generally absent in the amygdala. Disproportionate degeneration in the basal ganglia and thalamus, exceeding cortical decline was specific for females. When allowing higher-order models, a quadratic model could better describe the negative relation of absolute volume and age in the basal ganglia in males, and generally in the hippocampus and amygdala. We could show that negative age-relations are highly specific for certain subcortical structures in either gender. Importantly these findings also emphasize the significant impact of analytical strategies when deciding for correction of subcortical volumes to the whole-brain decline. Specifically, in the basal ganglia disproportionate shrinkage in females was suggested by the relative analysis while absolute volume analysis rather stressed an accelerating decline in older males. Given strong involvement of the basal ganglia in both cognitive aging and emotional regulation, our findings may be crucial for studies investigating the onset and prevalence of dementia and depressive symptoms in male and female aging.
当在神经生物学背景下构想神经精神疾病的特定年龄发作和特定性别特征时，考虑到衰老的差异轨迹可能至关重要。在这里，我们研究了年龄、性别及其相互作用对包括基底神经节、丘脑、海马体和杏仁核在内的已知与精神疾病有关的皮质下结构的绝对和相对体积的影响。分析了来自 ICBM 数据库的 76 名健康受试者（38 名男性，19-70 岁）的结构 MRI 数据。基底神经节和丘脑普遍存在与年龄相关的绝对萎缩，而海马体的衰退仅在男性中观察到，而在杏仁核中则普遍不存在。基底神经节和丘脑的不成比例退化，超过了皮质的衰退，这是女性特有的。当允许更高阶模型时，二次模型可以更好地描述男性基底神经节中绝对体积与年龄的负相关关系，并且通常在海马体和杏仁核中也是如此。我们可以证明，负向年龄关系在两性的某些皮质下结构中具有高度特异性。重要的是，这些发现还强调了在决定对皮质下体积进行全脑衰退校正时分析策略的重要性。具体而言，在基底神经节中，相对分析表明女性存在不成比例的萎缩，而绝对体积分析则强调了老年男性的衰退加速。鉴于基底神经节在认知衰老和情绪调节中都有强烈的参与，我们的研究结果对于研究男性和女性衰老中痴呆和抑郁症状的发病和流行情况可能至关重要。
