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Age-related decline in thickness and surface area in the cortical surface and hippocampus: lifespan trajectories and decade-by-decade analyses

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Abstract

Previous studies on age-related changes in cortical and hippocampal morphology were not designed or able to reveal the complex spatial patterns of changes across the lifespan. To this end, the current study examined these changes in a decade-by-decade manner by comparing consecutive age decades at the vertex-wise level. Additionally, the lifespan trajectories of cortical/hippocampal mean thickness and total surface area were modeled and plotted out to provide an overview of their age-related changes. Using two lifespan datasets (Ntotal = 1378; 18 ≤ age ≤ 100), vertex-wise thickness and surface area measurements were extracted from the cortical and unfolded hippocampal surfaces and analyzed using whole-brain/hippocampus vertex-wise analyses. Lifespan trajectories of cortical/hippocampal mean thickness and total surface area were modeled with generalized additive models for location, scale, and shape. These models revealed fairly linear declines in both cortical measures and inverted U-shaped trajectories for both hippocampal measures. Across the different age decades, the sizes and locations of cortical thinning clusters were highly variable across the age decades. No significant clusters of cortical surface area changes were observed across the age decades. Significant clusters of hippocampal surface area and thickness reduction were not observed until the 70s. Generally, the agreement between datasets on the hippocampal findings was much higher than those of the cortical surface. These findings revealed important nuances in the age-related changes of cortical and hippocampal morphology and cautioned against using lifespan trajectories to infer decade-by-decade changes in the cortical surface and the hippocampus.

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Funding

Junhong Yu is supported by the Nanyang Assistant Professorship (Award no. 021080–00001). The HCP Aging data used in the preparation of this manuscript were obtained from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Data Archive (NDA). NDA is a collaborative informatics system created by the National Institutes of Health to provide a national resource to support and accelerate research in mental health. This manuscript reflects the views of the authors and may not reflect the opinions or views of the NIH or of the submitters submitting original data to NDA. The HCP Aging study was supported by the National Institute On Aging of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U01AG052564 and by funds provided by the McDonnell Center for Systems Neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis. Data collection and sharing for the Cam-CAN dataset was funded by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant number BB/H008217/1), together with support from the UK Medical Research Council and the University of Cambridge, UK.

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  1. Psychology, School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 48 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Junhong Yu

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Yu, J. Age-related decline in thickness and surface area in the cortical surface and hippocampus: lifespan trajectories and decade-by-decade analyses. GeroScience (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-024-01220-1

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