Cross-sectional versus longitudinal estimates of age-related changes in the adult brain: overlaps and discrepancies.

ABSTRACT: The healthy adult brain undergoes tissue volume decline with age, but contradictory findings abound regarding rate of change. To identify a source of this discrepancy, we present contrasting statistical approaches to estimate hippocampal volume change with age based on 200 longitudinally-acquired magnetic resonance imaging in 70 healthy adults, age 20-70 years, who had 2-5 magnetic resonance imaging collected over 6 months to 8 years. Linear mixed-effects modeling using volume trajectories over age for each subject revealed significantly negative slopes with aging after a linear decline with a suggestion of acceleration in older individuals. By contrast, general linear modeling using either the first observation only of each subject or all observations treated independently (thereby disreg

SUBMITTER: Pfefferbaum A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4523414 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature