eLife (Nov 2021)
Individual variations in ‘brain age’ relate to early-life factors more than to longitudinal brain change
- Didac Vidal-Pineiro,
- Yunpeng Wang,
- Stine K Krogsrud,
- Inge K Amlien,
- William FC Baaré,
- David Bartres-Faz,
- Lars Bertram,
- Andreas M Brandmaier,
- Christian A Drevon,
- Sandra Düzel,
- Klaus Ebmeier,
- Richard N Henson,
- Carme Junqué,
- Rogier Andrew Kievit,
- Simone Kühn,
- Esten Leonardsen,
- Ulman Lindenberger,
- Kathrine S Madsen,
- Fredrik Magnussen,
- Athanasia Monika Mowinckel,
- Lars Nyberg,
- James M Roe,
- Barbara Segura,
- Stephen M Smith,
- Øystein Sørensen,
- Sana Suri,
- Rene Westerhausen,
- Andrew Zalesky,
- Enikő Zsoldos,
- Kristine Beate Walhovd,
- Anders Fjell
Affiliations
- Didac Vidal-Pineiro
- ORCiD
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Yunpeng Wang
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Stine K Krogsrud
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Inge K Amlien
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- William FC Baaré
- Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University Hospital - Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark
- David Bartres-Faz
- ORCiD
- Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona; Institute of Biomedical Research August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain
- Lars Bertram
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; Lübeck Interdisciplinary Platform for Genome Analytics (LIGA), University of Lübeck, Lubeck, Germany
- Andreas M Brandmaier
- ORCiD
- Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, Berlin, Germany; Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
- Christian A Drevon
- ORCiD
- Department of Nutrition, Inst Basic Med Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo & Vitas Ltd, Oslo, Norway
- Sandra Düzel
- Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
- Klaus Ebmeier
- ORCiD
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- Richard N Henson
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
- Carme Junqué
- Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona; Institute of Biomedical Research August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Barcelona, Spain
- Rogier Andrew Kievit
- ORCiD
- MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Cognitive Neuroscience Department, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, Netherlands
- Simone Kühn
- ORCiD
- Lise Meitner Group for Environmental Neuroscience, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany; Department of Psychiatry, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
- Esten Leonardsen
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Ulman Lindenberger
- ORCiD
- Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, Berlin, Germany; Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
- Kathrine S Madsen
- Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance, Centre for Functional and Diagnostic Imaging and Research, Copenhagen University Hospital - Amager and Hvidovre, Copenhagen, Denmark; Radiography, Department of Technology, University College Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
- Fredrik Magnussen
- ORCiD
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Athanasia Monika Mowinckel
- ORCiD
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Lars Nyberg
- ORCiD
- Umeå Centre for Functional Brain Imaging, Department of Integrative Medical Biology, Physiology Section and Department of Radiation Sciences, Diagnostic Radiology, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden
- James M Roe
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Barbara Segura
- Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Institute of Neurosciences, University of Barcelona; Institute of Biomedical Research August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS), Barcelona, Spain; Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red sobre Enfermedades Neurodegenerativas (CIBERNED), Barcelona, Spain
- Stephen M Smith
- ORCiD
- Center for Lifespan Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
- Øystein Sørensen
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Sana Suri
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN FMRIB), University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Departments of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- Rene Westerhausen
- Section for Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- Andrew Zalesky
- Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
- Enikő Zsoldos
- ORCiD
- Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, Departments of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- Kristine Beate Walhovd
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; Department of radiology and nuclear medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
- Anders Fjell
- Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway; Department of radiology and nuclear medicine, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.69995
- Journal volume & issue
-
Vol. 10
Abstract
Brain age is a widely used index for quantifying individuals’ brain health as deviation from a normative brain aging trajectory. Higher-than-expected brain age is thought partially to reflect above-average rate of brain aging. Here, we explicitly tested this assumption in two independent large test datasets (UK Biobank [main] and Lifebrain [replication]; longitudinal observations ≈ 2750 and 4200) by assessing the relationship between cross-sectional and longitudinal estimates of brain age. Brain age models were estimated in two different training datasets (n ≈ 38,000 [main] and 1800 individuals [replication]) based on brain structural features. The results showed no association between cross-sectional brain age and the rate of brain change measured longitudinally. Rather, brain age in adulthood was associated with the congenital factors of birth weight and polygenic scores of brain age, assumed to reflect a constant, lifelong influence on brain structure from early life. The results call for nuanced interpretations of cross-sectional indices of the aging brain and question their validity as markers of ongoing within-person changes of the aging brain. Longitudinal imaging data should be preferred whenever the goal is to understand individual change trajectories of brain and cognition in aging.
Keywords
