Chamard Chloé, Maller Jerome J, Menjot Nicolas, Debourdeau Eloi, Nael Virginie, Ritchie Karen, Carriere Isabelle, Daien Vincent
Department of Ophthalmology, Gui de Chauliac Hospital, Montpellier, F-34000, France.
Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier INM, University Montpellier, INSERM, Montpellier, F-34091, France.
Eye Brain. 2022 Jul 14;14:71-82. doi: 10.2147/EB.S358384. eCollection 2022.
Visual impairment is a major cause of disability and impairment of cognitive function in older people. Brain structural changes associated with visual function impairment are not well understood. The objective of this study was to assess the association between visual function and cortical thickness in older adults.
Participants were selected from the French population-based ESPRIT cohort of 2259 community-dwelling adults ≥65 years old enrolled between 1999 and 2001. We considered visual function and brain MRI images at the 12-year follow-up in participants who were right-handed and free of dementia and/or stroke, randomly selected from the whole cohort. High-resolution structural T1-weighted brain scans acquired with a 3-Tesla scanner. Regional reconstruction and segmentation involved using the FreeSurfer image-analysis suite.
A total of 215 participants were included (mean [SD] age 81.8 [3.7] years; 53.0% women): 30 (14.0%) had central vision loss and 185 (86.0%) normal central vision. Vision loss was associated with thinner cortical thickness in the right insula (within the lateral sulcus of the brain) as compared with the control group (mean thickness 2.38 [0.04] vs 2.50 [0.03] mm, 4.8% thinning, p= 0.04) after adjustment for age, sex, lifetime depression and cardiovascular disease.
The present study describes a significant thinning of the right insular cortex in older adults with vision loss. The insula subserves a wide variety of functions in humans ranging from sensory and affective processing to high-level cognitive processing. Reduced insula thickness associated with vision loss may increase cognitive burden in the ageing brain.
视力障碍是老年人残疾和认知功能受损的主要原因。与视力功能受损相关的脑结构变化尚未得到充分了解。本研究的目的是评估老年人视力功能与皮质厚度之间的关联。
参与者选自1999年至2001年间招募的基于法国人群的ESPRIT队列，该队列有2259名年龄≥65岁的社区居住成年人。我们在12年随访时考虑了右利手、无痴呆和/或中风的参与者的视力功能和脑MRI图像，这些参与者是从整个队列中随机选择的。使用3特斯拉扫描仪进行高分辨率结构T1加权脑扫描。区域重建和分割使用FreeSurfer图像分析套件。
共纳入215名参与者（平均[标准差]年龄81.8[3.7]岁；53.0%为女性）：30名（14.0%）有中心视力丧失，185名（86.0%）中心视力正常。与对照组相比，视力丧失与右侧脑岛（脑外侧沟内）皮质厚度变薄有关（平均厚度2.38[0.04]对2.50[0.03]mm，变薄4.8%，p = 0.04），在调整年龄、性别、终生抑郁和心血管疾病后。
本研究描述了视力丧失的老年人右侧脑岛皮质显著变薄。脑岛在人类中具有广泛的功能，从感觉和情感处理到高级认知处理。与视力丧失相关的脑岛厚度减少可能会增加衰老大脑的认知负担。
