Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
Central European Institute of Technology, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic; First Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University and St. Anne's University Hospital, Brno, Czech Republic.
Neuroimage. 2024 Nov 1;301:120881. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2024.120881. Epub 2024 Oct 1.
White matter (WM) development has been studied extensively, but most studies used cross-sectional data, and to the best of our knowledge, none of them considered the possible effects of biological (vs. chronological) age. Therefore, we conducted a longitudinal multimodal study of WM development and studied changes in fractional anisotropy (FA) in the different WM tracts and their relationship with cortical thickness-based measures of brain aging in young adulthood. A total of 105 participants from the European Longitudinal Study of Pregnancy and Childhood (ELSPAC) prenatal birth cohort underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the age of 23-24, and the age of 28-30 years. At both time points, FA in the different WM tracts was extracted using the JHU atlas, and brain age gap estimate (BrainAGE) was calculated using the Neuroanatomical Age Prediction using R (NAPR) model based on cortical thickness maps. Changes in FA and the speed of cortical brain aging were calculated as the difference between the respective variables in the late vs. early 20s. We demonstrated tract-specific increases as well as decreases in FA, which indicate that the WM microstructure continues to develop in the third decade of life. Moreover, the significant interaction between the speed of cortical brain aging, tract, and sex on mean FA revealed that a greater speed of cortical brain aging in young adulthood predicted greater decreases in FA in the bilateral cingulum and left superior longitudinal fasciculus in young adult men. Overall, these changes in FA in the WM tracts in young adulthood point out the protracted development of WM microstructure, particularly in men.
脑白质（WM）的发育已得到广泛研究，但大多数研究使用的是横断面数据，据我们所知，尚无研究考虑生物（而非生理）年龄的可能影响。因此，我们进行了一项 WM 发育的纵向多模态研究，并研究了年轻人脑白质各向异性分数（FA）的变化及其与皮质厚度脑老化指标的关系。来自欧洲妊娠和儿童纵向研究（ELSPAC）产前队列的 105 名参与者在 23-24 岁和 28-30 岁时接受了磁共振成像（MRI）检查。在这两个时间点，使用 JHU 图谱提取了不同 WM 束的 FA，使用基于皮质厚度图的神经解剖学年龄预测 R（NAPR）模型计算了脑年龄差距估计值（BrainAGE）。FA 的变化和皮质脑老化的速度是通过比较 20 多岁后期和早期的相应变量来计算的。我们证明了 FA 存在特定的增加和减少，这表明 WM 微观结构在生命的第三个十年仍在继续发育。此外，皮质脑老化速度、束和性别之间的显著交互作用对平均 FA 有影响，这表明年轻人脑皮质老化速度越快，预测其大脑白质内双侧扣带束和左侧上纵束 FA 下降幅度越大。总体而言，这些年轻人 WM 束 FA 的变化表明 WM 微观结构的发育具有延续性，尤其是在男性中。
