Age and sex effects on brain morphology

Cognitive reserve: Implications for diagnosis and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease

“…In order to test this hypothesis, some imaging studies have used brain atrophy as a surrogate for pathology. In healthy patients, some studies have failed to demonstrate an association between education and cerebral hemisphere volume [71][72][73], but this may be due to low power because of statistical measurement error for parenchymal volume [71]. On the contrary higher education was associated with increased cerebrospinal fluid volume, and, therefore, more atrophy (ie, subjects with higher CR remained cognitively normal despite more brain changes) in another study [71].…”

Schizophrenia Breakdown in the Well-regulated Lifelong Process of Brain Development and Maturation

“…Imaging studies of normal development have demonstrated that after early adolescence, when maximum total gray matter volume is reached (Giedd et al 1999a), cortical gray matter volume continues to decrease throughout the life-span (Jernigan et al 1991;Lim et al 1992;Pfefferbaum et al 1994;Sullivan et al 1995;Raz et al 1997;Passe et al 1997;Gur et al 1999;Bartzokis et al 2001). Post-mortem data suggests that this gray matter volume decrease is primarily a result of large neuron shrinkage and pruning of processes with minimal if any neuronal cell loss before the age of 55 (Terry et al 1987;Haug 1987;Pakkenberg and Gundersen 1997;Peters et al 1998).…”

Aging, gender, and the elderly adult brain: An examination of analytical strategies

“…All research with human participants was reviewed and approved by the Duke University Institutional Review Board, and informed consent was obtained for all participants. 35,41,43,46,49,51,[55][56][57]. This decrease in parenchymal volume has generally been attributed to atrophy of gray matter [5,8,21,28,35,41,43,45,48; but see [23] for an exception], particularly cortical thinning [50], and may result from cell-body atrophy or the outright death of cells [44].…”

“…This decrease in parenchymal volume has generally been attributed to atrophy of gray matter [5,8,21,28,35,41,43,45,48; but see [23] for an exception], particularly cortical thinning [50], and may result from cell-body atrophy or the outright death of cells [44]. Gray matter atrophy is in turn thought to enable the increase in CSF volume [28,35,41,43]. The effects of aging on white matter are not as clear, however.…”

“…Several of these studies have reported nonlinear rates of decline, particularly in the elderly, with studies reporting significant quadratic [16,57] or cubic [2]. Other studies, however, report no age-related change in total white matter volume [18,28,35,41,43,55], and some even report an increase [8,21].…”