ArticleAcademic radiology2019
Age-Related Declines in Occipital GABA are Associated with Reduced Fluid Processing Ability.
Article in Academic radiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 44 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
44 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 74 citations in OpenAlex.
- Meta-analysis and open-source database for in vivo brain Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy in health and disease.Analytical biochemistry · 2023Pooled it
- Pooled it
- A quantitative meta-analysis of brain glutamate metabolites in aging.Neurobiology of aging · 2020Pooled it
- Dynamic Recovery: GABA Agonism Restores Neural Variability in Older, Poorer Performing Adults.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2021Trial
- Epigenetic Regulation of Modulatory Neurotransmitter System Integrity in the Aging Brain: A Scoping Review Across the Lifespan.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- AI-enabled multimodal neuroimaging for neurotransmitter mapping in normal aging and age-related disease.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2026Review
- Neurochemical changes in GABA+, Glx, and the excitatory/inhibitory ratio in the calcarine cortex with healthy aging.NeuroImage · 2025Article
- Relationships between GABA + and Glx concentrations with age and inhibition in healthy older adults.Brain structure & function · 2025Article
- Modulation of brain signal variability in visual cortex reflects aging, GABA, and behavior.eLife · 2025Article
- Anti-Obesity Effects of LB-GABA.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- "Surviving and Thriving": evidence for cortical GABA stabilization in cognitively-intact oldest-old adults.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- The role of inhibitory and excitatory neurometabolites in age-related differences in action selection.npj aging · 2025Article
- Review
- GABA, Glx, and GSH in the cerebellum: their role in motor performance and learning across age groups.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2025Article
- Broadscale dampening of uncertainty adjustment in the aging brain.Nature communications · 2024Article
- GABA Prevents Sarcopenia by Regulation of Muscle Protein Degradation and Inflammaging in 23- to 25-Month-Old Female Mice.Journal of cachexia, sarcopenia and muscle · 2024Article
- Frontal GABA levels associate with musical rhythm production in healthy aging adults.Brain and cognition · 2024Article
- Age and visual cortex inhibition: a TMS-MRS study.Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991) · 2024Article
- Age-related fornix decline predicts conservative response strategy-based slowing in perceptual decision-making.Aging brain · 2024Article
- GABA levels decline with age: A longitudinal study.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
RATIONALE AND
objectivesHealthy aging is associated with pervasive declines in cognitive, motor, and sensory functioning. There are, however, substantial individual differences in behavioral performance among older adults. Several lines of animal research link age-related reductions of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the brain's primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, to age-related cognitive, motor, and sensory decline. Our study used proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) at 3T to explore whether occipital GABA declines with age in humans and whether individual differences in occipital GABA are linked to individual differences in fluid processing ability. MATERIALS AND
methodsWe used a MEGA-PRESS sequence that combines frequency spectral editing with a point-resolved spectroscopy sequence to quantify GABA. Spectra were obtained from a 30 × 30 × 25 mm voxel placed in the occipital cortex of 20 young adults (mean age 20.7 years) and 18 older adults (mean age 76.5 years). Participants also performed 11 fluid processing tasks outside the scanner, the results of which were z-scored and averaged to calculate a summary measure of fluid processing ability. Regression analysis was employed to determine the relationship between GABA concentrations in the occipital cortex and a summary measure of fluid processing ability.
resultsOccipital GABA was significantly lower in older participants compared to the younger participants. We also observed a significant positive relationship between occipital GABA and fluid processing ability. In fact, higher GABA was associated with better task performance in 10 of the 11 tasks.
conclusionThese findings suggest that GABA levels decline with age in humans and are associated with declines in fluid processing ability.
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Registered trials
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