Asymmetric thinning of the cerebral cortex across the adult lifespan is accelerated in Alzheimer’s disease

JM Roe; D Vidal-Piñeiro; Ø Sørensen; AM Brandmaier; S Düzel; HA Gonzalez; RA Kievit; E Knights; S Kühn; U Lindenberger; AM Mowinckel; L Nyberg; DC Park; S Pudas; MM Rundle; KB Walhovd; AM Fjell; R Westerhausen; CL Masters; AI Bush; C Fowler; D Darby; K Pertile; C Restrepo; B Roberts; J Robertson; R Rumble; T Ryan; S Collins; C Thai; B Trounson; K Lennon; QX Li; FY Ugarte; I Volitakis; M Vovos; R Williams; J Baker; A Russell; M Peretti; L Milicic; L Lim; M Rodrigues; K Taddei; T Taddei; E Hone; F Lim; S Fernandez; S Rainey-Smith; S Pedrini; R Martins; J Doecke; P Bourgeat; J Fripp; S Gibson; H Leroux; D Hanson; V Dore; P Zhang; S Burnham; CC Rowe; VL Villemagne; P Yates; SB Pejoska; G Jones; D Ames; E Cyarto; N Lautenschlager; K Barnham; L Cheng; A Hill; N Killeen; P Maruff; B Silbert; B Brown; H Sohrabi; G Savage; M Vacher

Journal article

Asymmetric thinning of the cerebral cortex across the adult lifespan is accelerated in Alzheimer’s disease

JM Roe, D Vidal-Piñeiro, Ø Sørensen, AM Brandmaier, S Düzel, HA Gonzalez, RA Kievit, E Knights, S Kühn, U Lindenberger, AM Mowinckel, L Nyberg, DC Park, S Pudas, MM Rundle, KB Walhovd, AM Fjell, R Westerhausen, CL Masters, AI Bush Show all

Nature Communications | NATURE PORTFOLIO | Published : 2021

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21057-y

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Abstract

Aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are associated with progressive brain disorganization. Although structural asymmetry is an organizing feature of the cerebral cortex it is unknown whether continuous age- and AD-related cortical degradation alters cortical asymmetry. Here, in multiple longitudinal adult lifespan cohorts we show that higher-order cortical regions exhibiting pronounced asymmetry at age ~20 also show progressive asymmetry-loss across the adult lifespan. Hence, accelerated thinning of the (previously) thicker homotopic hemisphere is a feature of aging. This organizational principle showed high consistency across cohorts in the Lifebrain consortium, and both the topological patt..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Ashley Bush Author

David Darby Author

Steven Collins Author

Qiao-Xin Li Author

Grants

Awarded by Seventh Framework Programme

Funding Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to Fabrice Crivello, Sophie Maingault, Nathalie TzourioMazoyer, and Bernard Mazoyer for their generosity in sharing the surface template created in the BIL & GIN; a unique database enriched in left-handed individuals for the study of human brain lateralization. The Lifebrain project is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 Grant: "Healthy minds 0-100 years: Optimising the use of European brain imaging cohorts (Lifebrain)." Grant agreement number: 732592. In addition, the different substudies are supported by different sources: LCBC: The European Research Council under grant agreements 283634, 725025 (to A.M.F.), and 313440 (to K.B.W.), and the Norwegian Research Council (to A.M.F. and K.B.W.) under grant agreement 249931 (TOPPFORSK), The National Association for Public Health's dementia research program, Norway (to A.M.F). Some of the data used in the preparation of this article were obtained from the Australian Imaging Biomarkers and Lifestyle Flagship Study of Ageing (AIBL) funded by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which was made available at the ADNI database (www.loni.usc.edu/ADNI).The AIBL researchers contributed data but did not participate in analysis or writing of this report.