ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2014
Accelerated changes in white matter microstructure during aging: a longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging study.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 184 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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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.
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Who cites it
184 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Genetic insights into human cortical organization and development through genome-wide analyses of 2,347 neuroimaging phenotypes.Nature genetics · 2023Pooled it
- Magnetic resonance elastography of the ageing brain in normal and demented populations: A systematic review.Human brain mapping · 2022Pooled it
- A systematic review and meta-analysis of structural magnetic resonance imaging studies investigating cognitive and social activity levels in older adults.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2018Pooled it
- Reliability of White Matter Microstructural Changes in HIV Infection: Meta-Analysis and Confirmation.AJNR. American journal of neuroradiology · 2017Pooled it
- A systematic review of MRI studies examining the relationship between physical fitness and activity and the white matter of the ageing brain.NeuroImage · 2016Pooled it
- Effects of simvastatin on white matter integrity in healthy middle-aged adults.Annals of clinical and translational neurology · 2021Trial
- Multimodal fusion of structural and functional brain imaging in depression using linked independent component analysis.Human brain mapping · 2020Trial
- Free water: A marker of age-related modifications of the cingulum white matter and its association with cognitive decline.PloS one · 2020Trial
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- Trial
- The causal relationship between immune cells, white matter microstructure and dementia: a Mendelian randomization study and co-localization analysis.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Developing an SNR-efficient tensor-valued diffusion encoding protocol for studying brain microstructural changes in neurodegeneration.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Divergent Multimodal Age-Association Profiles Across the Human Brain.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Spatiotemporal white-matter development across early childhood.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2026Article
- Multiscale brain development across the human lifespan.Communications biology · 2026Review
- Anterior Superior Longitudinal Fasciculus Microstructure Correlates With Bimanual Visuomotor Performance in Healthy Younger but Not Older Adults.The European journal of neuroscience · 2026Article
- Lifespan normative modeling of brain microstructure.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Human brain changes after first psilocybin use.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Article
- Age-related cerebello-thalamo-cortical white matter degradation and executive function performance across the lifespan.Scientific reports · 2026Article
124 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
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Abstract
It is well established that human brain white matter structure changes with aging, but the timescale and spatial distribution of this change remain uncertain. Cross-sectional diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies indicate that, after a period of relative stability during adulthood, there is an accelerated decline in anisotropy and increase in diffusivity values during senescence; and, spatially, results have been discussed within the context of several anatomical frameworks. However, inferring trajectories of change from cross-sectional data can be challenging; and, as yet, there have been no longitudinal reports of the timescale and spatial distribution of age-related white matter change in healthy adults across the adult lifespan. In a longitudinal DTI study of 203 adults between 20 and 84 years of age, we used tract-based spatial statistics to characterize the pattern of annual change in fractional anisotropy, axial diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and mean diffusivity and examined whether there was an acceleration of change with age. We found extensive and overlapping significant annual decreases in fractional anisotropy, and increases in axial diffusivity, radial diffusivity, and mean diffusivity. Spatially, results were consistent with inferior-to-superior gradients of lesser-to-greater vulnerability. Annual change increased with age, particularly within superior regions, with age-related decline estimated to begin in the fifth decade. Charting white matter microstructural changes in healthy aging provides essential context to clinical studies, and future studies should compare age trajectories between healthy participants and at-risk populations and also explore the relationship between DTI rates of change and cognitive decline.
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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.