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Cortical Gray Matter Atrophy in Healthy Aging Cannot Be Explained By Undetected Incipient Cognitive Disorders: A Comment on Burgmans et al. (2009)

Institution:	Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway, P.b.1094 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. andersmf@psykologi.uio.no
Publication Date:	Mar-2010
Journal:	Neuropsychology
Volume Number:	24
Issue Number:	2
Pages:	258-63; discussion 264
Citation:	Neuropsychology. 2010 Mar;24(2):258-63; discussion 264-266.
PubMed ID:	20230119
PMCID:	PMC3068612
Appears in Collections:	NA-MIC
Sponsors:	P01 AG03991 (AG) funded by NIA NIH HHS P20 MH071616 (MH) funded by NIMH NIH HHS P41 RR14075 (RR) funded by NCRR NIH HHS P50 AG05681 (AG) funded by NIA NIH HHS R01 EB001550 (EB) funded by NIBIB NIH HHS R01 NS052585-01 (NS) funded by NINDS NIH HHS R01 RR16594-01A1 (RR) funded by NCRR NIH HHS R01 NS39581 (NS) funded by NINDS NIH HHS R01 RR13609 (RR) funded by NCRR NIH HHS R01 EB006758 (EB) funded by NIBIB NIH HHS R37 AG11230 (AG) funded by NIA NIH HHS RR16594 (RR) funded by NCRR NIH HHS RR14075 (RR) funded by NCRR NIH HHS U01 AG024904 (AG) funded by NIA NIH HHS U24 RR021382 (RR) funded by NCRR NIH HHS U54 EB005149 (EB) funded by NIBIB NIH HHS
Generated Citation:	Fjell A.M., Westlye L.T., Espeseth T., Reinvang I., Dale A.M., Holland D., Walhovd K.B. Cortical Gray Matter Atrophy in Healthy Aging Cannot Be Explained By Undetected Incipient Cognitive Disorders: A Comment on Burgmans et al. (2009). Neuropsychology. 2010 Mar;24(2):258-63; discussion 264-266. PMID: 20230119. PMCID: PMC3068612.
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Burgmans, van Boxtel, Vuurman, et al. (2009) published an interesting study titled "The Prevalence of Cortical Gray Matter Atrophy May Be Overestimated in the Healthy Aging Brain" on how subclinical cognitive disorders may affect correlations between age and cortical volume. Correlations between cortical gray matter volume and age were found in 30 elderly with cognitive decline after 6 years, but not in 28 elderly without cognitive decline. This study is important, and demonstrates that preclinical cognitive disorders may affect cortical brain volumes before being detectable by neuropsychological tests. However, we are not convinced by the conclusions: "... gray matter atrophy... is to a lesser extent associated with the healthy aging process, but more likely with brain processes underlying significant cognitive decline" (p. 547) and "... cortical gray matter atrophy in the aging brain may be overestimated in a large number of studies on healthy aging" (p. 547). We analyzed the cross-sectional MR data (n = 1,037) as well as longitudinal data from a sample of very well-screened elderly followed by cognitive testing for 2 years. In the cross-sectional data, the correlations between age and brain volumes were generally not much reduced when the upper age limit was lowered. This would not be expected if age-related incipient cognitive disorders caused the correlations given that the incidence of cognitive decline increased with age. Longitudinally, 1-year atrophy was identified in all tested regions. It is likely that cortical brain atrophy is manifested in cognitively normal elderly without subclinical cognitive disorders.