ArticleNeurobiology of aging2012
Fractional anisotropy of water diffusion in cerebral white matter across the lifespan.
Article in Neurobiology of aging, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 236 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
236 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 381 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ancestral, Pregnancy, and Negative Early-Life Risks Shape Children's Brain (Dis)similarity to Schizophrenia.Biological psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Altered lateralization of the cingulum in deployment-related traumatic brain injury: An ENIGMA military-relevant brain injury study.Human brain mapping · 2023Pooled it
- Unraveling the mystery of white matter in depression: A translational perspective on recent advances.Brain and behavior · 2022Pooled it
- Role of White Matter Microstructure in Impulsive Behavior.The Journal of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences · 2022Pooled it
- Cerebral small vessel disease genomics and its implications across the lifespan.Nature communications · 2020Pooled it
- White matter microstructural alterations across four major psychiatric disorders: mega-analysis study in 2937 individuals.Molecular psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Heterochronicity of white matter development and aging explains regional patient control differences in schizophrenia.Human brain mapping · 2016Pooled it
- Association between peripheral inflammation and free-water imaging in Major Depressive Disorder before and after ketamine treatment - A pilot study.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Trial
- Widespread higher fractional anisotropy associates to better cognitive functions in individuals at ultra-high risk for psychosis.Human brain mapping · 2019Trial
- Predicting Surgery Targets in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy through Structural Connectome Based Simulations.PLoS computational biology · 2015Trial
- MRI-Based Quantitative Assessment of Normal-Appearing White and Gray Matter Demyelination in Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's Disease, Long COVID, and Normal Aging.Biomedicines · 2026Article
- A spatially resolved genomic-molecular atlas of human white-matter microstructure.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Gene dosage effects of 22q11.2 copy number variants on in-vivo measures of white matter axonal density and dispersion.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Aging and metabolism contribute separately to brain-body health.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Lifespan normative modeling of brain microstructure.Nature communications · 2026Article
- White matter microstructure and its association with visuospatial processing development during early infancy.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Deviation in development of dorsal association tracts during preadolescence links to concurrent and future cognitive performance and transdiagnostic psychopathology.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon: Cognitive, Neural, and Neurochemical Perspectives.Biomedicines · 2026Review
- Linking inflammatory and structural neuroimaging biomarkers in treatment-resistant depression: Current evidence and emerging hypotheses.Neuroscience applied · 2026Review
- Research Review: What we have learned about the endocannabinoid system in developmental psychopathology.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Review
176 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Determining the time of peak of cerebral maturation is vital for our understanding of when cerebral maturation ceases and the cerebral degeneration in healthy aging begins. We carefully mapped changes in fractional anisotropy (FA) of water diffusion for eleven major cerebral white matter tracts in a large group (831) of healthy human subjects aged 11-90. FA is a neuroimaging index of micro-structural white matter integrity, sensitive to age-related changes in cerebral myelin levels, measured using diffusion tensor imaging. The average FA values of cerebral white matter (WM) reached peak at the age 32 ± 6 years. FA measurements for all but one major cortical white matter tract (cortico-spinal) reached peaks between 23 and 39 years of age. The maturation rates, prior to age-of-peak were significantly correlated (r=0.74; p=0.01) with the rates of decline, past age-of-peak. Regional analysis of corpus callosum (CC) showed that thinly-myelinated, densely packed fibers in the genu, that connect pre-frontal areas, maturated later and showed higher decline in aging than the more thickly myelinated motor and sensory areas in the body and splenium of CC. Our findings can be summarized as: associative, cerebral WM tracts that reach their peak FA values later in life also show progressively higher age-related decline than earlier maturing motor and sensory tracts. These findings carry multiple and diverse implications for both theoretical studies of the neurobiology of maturation and aging and for the clinical studies of neuropsychiatric disorders.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.