ReviewProgress in neurobiology2014
What is normal in normal aging? Effects of aging, amyloid and Alzheimer's disease on the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus.
Review in Progress in neurobiology, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 446 papers, 6 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
446 citing papers in PubMed, 6 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 827 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brain maps of general cognitive functioning: neuroimaging and neurobiological signatures.Translational psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Structural Neuroimaging Correlates of Neuropsychiatric Symptoms in Alzheimer's Disease: A Systematic Literature Review.Dementia and geriatric cognitive disorders · 2025Pooled it
- Alcohol and brain structure across the lifespan: A systematic review of large-scale neuroimaging studies.Addiction biology · 2024Pooled it
- Exercise intervention on the brain structure and function of patients with mild cognitive impairment: systematic review based on magnetic resonance imaging studies.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Lower brain glucose metabolism in normal ageing is predominantly frontal and temporal: A systematic review and pooled effect size and activation likelihood estimates meta-analyses.Human brain mapping · 2023Pooled it
- Spousal caregiving, widowhood, and cognition: A systematic review and a biopsychosocial framework for understanding the relationship between interpersonal losses and dementia risk in older adulthood.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2022Pooled it
- Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Alters Brain Communication Networks to Improve the Cognitive Function in Patients with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment - A Clinical Trial.Current neuropharmacology · 2026Trial
- Impact of meditation on brain age derived from multimodal neuroimaging in experts and older adults from a randomized trial.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- The Effects of a Multidomain Lifestyle Intervention on Brain Function and Its Relation With Immunometabolic Markers and Intestinal Health in Older Adults at Risk of Cognitive Decline: Study Design and Baseline Characteristics of the HELI Randomized Controlled Trial.JMIR research protocols · 2025Trial
- The Effects of Computerized Cognitive Training in Older Adults' Cognitive Performance and Biomarkers of Structural Brain Aging.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2024Trial
- Aerobic exercise training and neurocognitive function in cognitively normal older adults: A one-year randomized controlled trial.Journal of internal medicine · 2022Trial
- A pattern to rule them all: tracing a human brain map of molecular aspects shared by Alzheimer's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies.GeroScience · 2026Article
- Apolipoprotein E ε4 and type 2 diabetes cooperatively accelerate amyloid beta and tau neurodegeneration.European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2026Article
- A new era of genome-wide association studies in the field of Alzheimer's disease and overlapping co-pathologies: lessons learned from a neuropathology-centered approach.Acta neuropathologica · 2026Review
- Divergent Multimodal Age-Association Profiles Across the Human Brain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Cortical thickness changes precede high levels of amyloid by at least 7 years.Nature neuroscience · 2026Article
- From MRI to 3D printing: a tangible neuroeducational tool for visualizing hippocampal morphology and Alzheimer's disease progression.Journal of neural transmission (Vienna, Austria : 1996) · 2026Article
- The Importance of Studying the Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging Across Cultures.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Review
- Prediction of cognitive outcome and progression to dementia using ω6-PUFA/ω3-PUFA ratio.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Brain maintenance biomarkers from structural and functional interactions in aging and neurodegeneration.Nature communications · 2026Article
386 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
What can be expected in normal aging, and where does normal aging stop and pathological neurodegeneration begin? With the slow progression of age-related dementias such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is difficult to distinguish age-related changes from effects of undetected disease. We review recent research on changes of the cerebral cortex and the hippocampus in aging and the borders between normal aging and AD. We argue that prominent cortical reductions are evident in fronto-temporal regions in elderly even with low probability of AD, including regions overlapping the default mode network. Importantly, these regions show high levels of amyloid deposition in AD, and are both structurally and functionally vulnerable early in the disease. This normalcy-pathology homology is critical to understand, since aging itself is the major risk factor for sporadic AD. Thus, rather than necessarily reflecting early signs of disease, these changes may be part of normal aging, and may inform on why the aging brain is so much more susceptible to AD than is the younger brain. We suggest that regions characterized by a high degree of life-long plasticity are vulnerable to detrimental effects of normal aging, and that this age-vulnerability renders them more susceptible to additional, pathological AD-related changes. We conclude that it will be difficult to understand AD without understanding why it preferably affects older brains, and that we need a model that accounts for age-related changes in AD-vulnerable regions independently of AD-pathology.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.