Minute Effects of Sex on the Aging Brain: A Multisample Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Healthy Aging and Alzheimer's Disease
Name
Fjell-2009-Minute Effects of Se.pdf
Size
2.06 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Fjell, Anders M.
Westlye, Lars T.
Amlien, Inge
Espeseth, Thomas
Reinvang, Ivar
Raz, Naftali
Agartz, Ingrid
Dale, Anders M.
Walhovd, Kristine B.
Salat, David
Date Issued
July 2009
Journal
Journal of Neuroscience
Publisher
Society for Neuroscience
Citation
Fjell, Anders M et al. “Minute Effects of Sex on the Aging Brain: A Multisample Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Healthy Aging and Alzheimer's Disease.” J. Neurosci. 29.27 (2009): 8774-8783. © 2009 The Society for Neuroscience
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Age is associated with substantial macrostructural brain changes. While some recent magnetic resonance imaging studies have reported larger age effects in men than women, others find no sex differences. As brain morphometry is a potentially important tool in diagnosis and monitoring of age-related neurological diseases, e.g., Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is important to know whether sex influences brain aging. We analyzed cross-sectional magnetic resonance scans from 1143 healthy participants from seven subsamples provided by four independent research groups. In addition, 96 patients with mild AD were included. Estimates of cortical thickness continuously across the brain surface, as well as volume of 17 subcortical structures, were obtained by use of automated segmentation tools (FreeSurfer). In the healthy participants, no differences in aging slopes between women and men were found in any part of the cortex. Pallidum corrected for intracranial volume showed slightly higher age correlations for men. The analyses were repeated in each of the seven subsamples, and the lack of age x sex interactions was largely replicated. Analyses of the AD sample showed no interactions between sex and age for any brain region. We conclude that sex has negligible effects on the age slope of brain volumes both in healthy participants and in AD.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Martinos Imaging Center (McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT)
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1523/jneurosci.0115-09.2009
