Nyberg Lars, Andersson Micael, Lundquist Anders
Department of Radiation Sciences, Radiology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
Department of Integrative Medical Biology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
Aging Brain. 2023 Feb 28;3:100070. doi: 10.1016/j.nbas.2023.100070. eCollection 2023.
Age-related changes in cortical volumes are well established but relatively few studies probed its constituents, surface area (SA) and thickness (TH). Here we analyzed 10-year, 3-waves longitudinal data from a large sample of healthy individuals (baseline age = 55-80). The findings showed marked age-related changes of SA in frontal, temporal, and parietal association cortices, and Bivariate Latent Change Score models revealed significant SA-associations with changes in speed of processing in both the 5- and 10-year models. The corresponding results for TH revealed a late onset of thinning and significant associations with reduced cognition in the 10-year model only. Taken together, our findings suggest that cortical surface area shrinks and impacts information-processing capacity gradually in aging, whereas cortical thinning only manifests and impacts fluid cognition in advanced aging.
皮质体积的年龄相关变化已得到充分证实，但相对较少的研究探究其组成部分，即表面积（SA）和厚度（TH）。在此，我们分析了来自大量健康个体（基线年龄 = 55 - 80岁）的10年、3波纵向数据。研究结果显示，额叶、颞叶和顶叶联合皮质的表面积存在明显的年龄相关变化，双变量潜在变化得分模型显示，在5年和10年模型中，表面积与加工速度的变化均存在显著关联。厚度的相应结果显示，变薄出现较晚，且仅在10年模型中与认知能力下降存在显著关联。综合来看，我们的研究结果表明，在衰老过程中，皮质表面积逐渐缩小并影响信息处理能力，而皮质变薄仅在衰老后期出现并影响流体认知。
