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The Journal of Neuroscience, July 8, 2009, 29(27):8774-8783; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0115-09.2009

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Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Minute Effects of Sex on the Aging Brain: A Multisample Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Healthy Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

Anders M. Fjell,^1,3 Lars T. Westlye,¹ Inge Amlien,¹ Thomas Espeseth,¹ Ivar Reinvang,¹ Naftali Raz,^4,5 Ingrid Agartz,^2,6,7 David H. Salat,⁸ Doug N. Greve,⁸ Bruce Fischl,^8,9 Anders M. Dale,^10,11,12 and Kristine B. Walhovd^1,3

¹Center for the Study of Human Cognition, Department of Psychology, and ²Department of Psychiatry, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway, ³Department of Neuropsychology, Ullevaal University Hospital, Oslo 0317, Norway, ⁴Department of Psychology and ⁵Institute of Gerontology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202, ⁶Department of Psychiatric Research, Diakonhjemmet Hospital, 0319 Oslo, Norway, ⁷Human Brain Informatics, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Psychiatry Section, Karolinska Institutet and Hospital, 171 76 Stockholm, Sweden, ⁸Athinoula A. Martinos Center, Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts 02129, ⁹Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, and ¹⁰Multimodal Imaging Laboratory and ¹¹Departments of Radiology and ¹²Neurosciences, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093

Correspondence should be addressed to Anders M. Fjell, Department of Psychology, Pb. 1094 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. Email: andersmf{at}psykologi.uio.no

Age is associated with substantial macrostructural brain changes. While some recent magnetic resonance imaging studies have reported larger age effects in men than women, others find no sex differences. As brain morphometry is a potentially important tool in diagnosis and monitoring of age-related neurological diseases, e.g., Alzheimer's disease (AD), it is important to know whether sex influences brain aging. We analyzed cross-sectional magnetic resonance scans from 1143 healthy participants from seven subsamples provided by four independent research groups. In addition, 96 patients with mild AD were included. Estimates of cortical thickness continuously across the brain surface, as well as volume of 17 subcortical structures, were obtained by use of automated segmentation tools (FreeSurfer). In the healthy participants, no differences in aging slopes between women and men were found in any part of the cortex. Pallidum corrected for intracranial volume showed slightly higher age correlations for men. The analyses were repeated in each of the seven subsamples, and the lack of age x sex interactions was largely replicated. Analyses of the AD sample showed no interactions between sex and age for any brain region. We conclude that sex has negligible effects on the age slope of brain volumes both in healthy participants and in AD.

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Received Dec. 19, 2008; revised April 6, 2009; accepted April 29, 2009.

Correspondence should be addressed to Anders M. Fjell, Department of Psychology, Pb. 1094 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. Email: andersmf{at}psykologi.uio.no

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