Detection of cortical thickness correlates of cognitive performance: Reliability across MRI scan sessions, scanners, and field strengths

Abstract

In normal humans, relationships between cognitive test performance and cortical structure have received little study, in part, because of the paucity of tools for measuring cortical structure. Computational morphometric methods have recently been developed that enable the measurement of cortical thickness from MRI data, but little data exist on their reliability. We undertook this study to evaluate the reliability of an automated cortical thickness measurement method to detect correlates of interest between thickness and cognitive task performance. Fifteen healthy older participants were scanned four times at two-week intervals on three different scanner platforms. The four MRI datasets were initially treated independently to investigate the reliability of the spatial localization of findings from exploratory whole-cortex analyses of cortical thickness-cognitive performance correlates. Next, the first dataset was used to define cortical ROIs based on the exploratory results that were then applied to the remaining three datasets to determine whether the relationships between cognitive performance and regional cortical thickness were comparable across different scanner platforms and Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptNeuroimage. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 January 1. Published in final edited form as:Neuroimage. 2008 January 1; 39(1): 10-18. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript field strengths. Verbal memory performance was associated with medial temporal cortical thickness, while visuomotor speed/set-shifting was associated with lateral parietal cortical thickness. These effects were highly reliable-in terms of both spatial localization and magnitude of absolute cortical thickness measurements-across the four scan sessions. Brain-behavior relationships between regional cortical thickness and cognitive task performance can be reliably identified using an automated data analysis system, suggesting that these measures may be useful as imaging biomarkers of disease or performance ability in multi-center studies in which MRI data are pooled.

Motion‐related artifacts in structural brain images revealed with independent estimates of in‐scanner head motion

“…Of note, T1w scans flagged by a combination of $\overline{\mathit{F}\mathit{D}}$ and QC ratings: (1) increased with increasing age, and (2) exhibited considerably reduced global and regional estimates of gray matter volume and thickness. Reductions in gray matter volume and thickness are well documented as a hallmark of healthy aging and cognitive decline [DeKosky and Scheff, 1990; Dickerson et al, 2008, 2012; Sowell et al, 2003]. We suggest that these effects may in some cases be overestimated, particularly in certain brain locations, by the inclusion of biased estimates from T1w structural scans with motion artifacts.…”

“…FS processing has been demonstrated to have high test–retest reliability in identifying and measuring various aspects of brain anatomy across scanner manufacturers and field strengths [Dickerson et al, 2008; Han et al, 2006; Jovicich et al, 2006; Morey et al, 2010; Reuter et al, 2012]. However, it is important to point out that the FS processing pipeline requires careful inspection of processed outputs to ensure that segmentations and reconstructions are spatially accurate and anatomically correct.…”

Morphometric and Histologic Substrates of Cingulate Integrity in Elders with Exceptional Memory Capacity

“…We coined the term "SuperAger" for these individuals with the assumption that they had a high likelihood of having avoided the involutional effects of age on memory function. Previous investigations of this cohort (Harrison et al, 2012) found that in a small group of SuperAgers (N ϭ 12), there was little evidence of the age-related cortical atrophy that has been demonstrated in numerous studies on cognitively average populations of healthy elderly (Salat et al, 2004;Yao et al, 2012). Most surprisingly, a patch of anterior cingulate cortex was thicker in the SuperAger group than even in cognitively normal 50-to 65-year-old subjects (Harrison et al, 2012).…”

Reproducibility of quantitative structural and physiological MRI measurements

“…Previous efforts demonstrated high scan–rescan reproducibility of the neuroimaging included of the volumetric measurements for subcortical brain structures (Maclaren et al., 2014), cortical gray matter thickness (Dickerson et al., 2008; Han et al., 2006; Li et al., 2015), and diffusion tensor measurements (Acheson et al., 2017; Jovicich et al., 2014). Likewise, several prior studies quantified scan–rescan stability and reproducibility of the MRS measurements at 3T (Wellard, Briellmann, Jennings, & Jackson, 2005; Wijtenburg & Knight‐Scott, 2011; Wijtenburg et al., 2013).…”