Individual variations in ‘brain age’ relate to early-life factors more than to longitudinal brain change

eLife

James M Roe¹  Inge K Amlien¹  Yunpeng Wang¹  Stine K Krogsrud¹  Didac Vidal-Pineiro¹  Esten Leonardsen¹  Fredrik Magnussen¹  Athanasia Monika Mowinckel¹  Øystein Sørensen¹  Anders Fjell²  Kristine Beate Walhovd²  Lars Bertram³  Stephen M Smith⁴  Sandra Düzel⁴  William FC Baaré⁵  Kathrine S Madsen⁶  Andrew Zalesky⁷  David Bartres-Faz⁸  Barbara Segura⁹  Carme Junqué⁹  Christian A Drevon^1,10  Klaus Ebmeier^1,11  Simone Kühn^1,12  Richard N Henson^1,13  Rogier Andrew Kievit^1,14  Andreas M Brandmaier^1,15  Ulman Lindenberger^1,15  Rene Westerhausen^1,16  Lars Nyberg^1,17  Sana Suri^1,18  Enikő Zsoldos^1,19 

[1] Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;Department of radiology and nuclear medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway;Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;Lübeck Interdisciplinary Platform for Genome Analytics (LIGA), University of Lübeck, Lubeck, Germany;Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany;Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University Hospital - Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark;Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University Hospital - Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark;Radiography, Department of Technology, University College Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark;Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia;Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona; Institute of Biomedical Research August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain;Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona; Institute of Biomedical Research August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain;Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Barcelona, Spain;Department of Nutrition, Inst Basic Med Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo & Vitas Ltd, Oslo, Norway;Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom;Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany;Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany;MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom;MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom;Cognitive Neuroscience Department, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands;Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, Berlin, Germany;Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany;Section for Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway;Umeå Centre for Functional Brain Imaging, Department of Integrative Medical Biology, Physiology Section and Department of Radiation Sciences, Diagnostic Radiology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden;Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN FMRIB), University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom;Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Departments of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom;Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Departments of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom;

关键词: Aging;    brain age gap;    Brain age delta;    brain decline;    neuroimaging;    T1w;    Human;   

DOI  :  10.7554/eLife.69995

来源: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd

【 摘 要 】

Brain age is a widely used index for quantifying individuals’ brain health as deviation from a normative brain aging trajectory. Higher-than-expected brain age is thought partially to reflect above-average rate of brain aging. Here, we explicitly tested this assumption in two independent large test datasets (UK Biobank [main] and Lifebrain [replication]; longitudinal observations ≈ 2750 and 4200) by assessing the relationship between cross-sectional and longitudinal estimates of brain age. Brain age models were estimated in two different training datasets (n ≈ 38,000 [main] and 1800 individuals [replication]) based on brain structural features. The results showed no association between cross-sectional brain age and the rate of brain change measured longitudinally. Rather, brain age in adulthood was associated with the congenital factors of birth weight and polygenic scores of brain age, assumed to reflect a constant, lifelong influence on brain structure from early life. The results call for nuanced interpretations of cross-sectional indices of the aging brain and question their validity as markers of ongoing within-person changes of the aging brain. Longitudinal imaging data should be preferred whenever the goal is to understand individual change trajectories of brain and cognition in aging.

【 授权许可】

CC BY