Jockwitz Christiane, Mérillat Susan, Liem Franziskus, Oschwald Jessica, Amunts Katrin, Jäncke Lutz, Caspers Svenja
Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1), Research Centre Jülich, Jülich, Germany.
Institute for Anatomy I, Medical Faculty and University Hospital Düsseldorf, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2021 Apr 16;15:635687. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2021.635687. eCollection 2021.
Cross-sectional studies indicate that normal aging is accompanied by decreases in brain structure. Longitudinal studies, however, are relatively rare and inconsistent regarding their outcomes. Particularly the heterogeneity of methods, sample characteristics and the high inter-individual variability in older adults prevent the deduction of general trends. Therefore, the current study aimed to compare longitudinal age-related changes in brain structure (measured through cortical thickness) in two large independent samples of healthy older adults ( = 161 each); the Longitudinal Healthy Aging Brain (LHAB) database project at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and 1000BRAINS at the Research Center Juelich, Germany. Annual percentage changes in the two samples revealed stable to slight decreases in cortical thickness over time. After correction for major covariates, i.e., baseline age, sex, education, and image quality, sample differences were only marginally present. Results suggest that general trends across time might be generalizable over independent samples, assuming the same methodology is used, and similar sample characteristics are present.
横断面研究表明，正常衰老伴随着脑结构的减少。然而，纵向研究相对较少，且其结果并不一致。特别是方法的异质性、样本特征以及老年人个体间的高变异性阻碍了一般趋势的推导。因此，本研究旨在比较两个大型独立健康老年人样本（每组n = 161）中脑结构（通过皮质厚度测量）与年龄相关的纵向变化；瑞士苏黎世大学的纵向健康衰老大脑（LHAB）数据库项目，以及德国于利希研究中心的1000BRAINS。两个样本中每年的百分比变化显示，随着时间推移，皮质厚度稳定至略有下降。在校正主要协变量，即基线年龄、性别教育和图像质量后，样本差异仅略微存在。结果表明，假设使用相同的方法且存在相似的样本特征，那么随时间变化的一般趋势可能在独立样本中具有普遍性。
