ArticleMolecular psychiatry2021
Three major dimensions of human brain cortical ageing in relation to cognitive decline across the eighth decade of life.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 63 citations in OpenAlex.
- Brain maps of general cognitive functioning: neuroimaging and neurobiological signatures.Translational psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- No long-term benefits from resistance training on brain grey matter volumes in active older adults at retirement age.BMC geriatrics · 2025Trial
- Alzheimer's Disease Brain Phenotypes are Age-dependent.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Dissociable contributions of cortical thickness and surface area to cognitive ageing: evidence from multiple longitudinal cohorts.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Precision estimates of longitudinal brain aging capture unexpected individual differences in one year.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Effect sizes of APOE e4 on the same general cognitive ability test taken by the same people from age 11 to age 90: The Lothian Birth Cohorts 1921 and 1936.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Risk and protective factors associated with brain grey matter patterns in a population-based cohort of cognitively unimpaired 70 years old.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Vulnerability to memory decline in aging revealed by a mega-analysis of structural brain change.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Development and Validation of a Brain Aging Biomarker in Middle-Aged and Older Adults: Deep Learning Approach.JMIR aging · 2025Article
- Reliability of structural brain change in cognitively healthy adult samples.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Lessons we learned from the Lothian Birth Cohorts of 1921 and 1936.Genomic psychiatry : advancing science from genes to society · 2025Article
- Reliability of structural brain change in cognitively healthy adult samples.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- The utility of explainable AI for MRI analysis: Relating model predictions to neuroimaging features of the aging brain.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Brain maps of general cognitive function and spatial correlations with neurobiological cortical profiles.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The interplay of age, gender and amyloid on brain and cognition in mid-life and older adults.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Single-neuron analysis of aging-associated changes in learning reveals impairments in transcriptional plasticity.Aging cell · 2024Article
- Preliminary evidence for preserved synaptic density in late-life depression.Translational psychiatry · 2024Article
- Sleep-dependent memory consolidation in young and aged brains.Aging brain · 2024Article
- Cognitive and gray matter volume predictors of learning across two types of casual video games in older Adults: Action vs Strategy.Aging brain · 2024Article
- Grey-matter structure in cortical and limbic regions correlates with general cognitive ability in old age.Aging brain · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
16 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Different brain regions can be grouped together, based on cross-sectional correlations among their cortical characteristics; this patterning has been used to make inferences about ageing processes. However, cross-sectional brain data conflate information on ageing with patterns that are present throughout life. We characterised brain cortical ageing across the eighth decade of life in a longitudinal ageing cohort, at ages ~73, ~76, and ~79 years, with a total of 1376 MRI scans. Volumetric changes among cortical regions of interest (ROIs) were more strongly correlated (average r = 0.805, SD = 0.252) than were cross-sectional volumes of the same ROIs (average r = 0.350, SD = 0.178). We identified a broad, cortex-wide, dimension of atrophy that explained 66% of the variance in longitudinal changes across the cortex. Our modelling also discovered more specific fronto-temporal and occipito-parietal dimensions that were orthogonal to the general factor and together explained an additional 20% of the variance. The general factor was associated with declines in general cognitive ability (r = 0.431, p < 0.001) and in the domains of visuospatial ability (r = 0.415, p = 0.002), processing speed (r = 0.383, p < 0.001) and memory (r = 0.372, p < 0.001). Individual differences in brain cortical atrophy with ageing are manifest across three broad dimensions of the cerebral cortex, the most general of which is linked with cognitive declines across domains. Longitudinal approaches are invaluable for distinguishing lifelong patterns of brain-behaviour associations from patterns that are specific to aging.
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