A common brain network links development, aging, and vulnerability to disease

Any further question? Gwenaelle Douaud (Oxford FMRIB Centre)

Several theories link processes of development and aging in humans. In neuroscience, one model posits for instance that healthy age-related brain degeneration mirrors development, with the areas of the brain thought to develop later also degenerating earlier. However, intrinsic evidence for such a link between healthy aging and development in brain structure remains elusive. Here, we show that a data-driven analysis of brain structural variation across 484 healthy participants (8-85 y) reveals a largely - but not only - transmodal network whose lifespan pattern of age-related change intrinsically supports this model of mirroring development and aging. We further demonstrate that this network of brain regions, which develops relatively late during adolescence and shows accelerated degeneration in old age compared with the rest of the brain, characterizes areas of heightened vulnerability to unhealthy developmental and aging processes, as exemplified by schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, respectively. Specifically, this network, while derived solely from healthy subjects, spatially recapitulates the pattern of brain abnormalities observed in both schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. This network is further associated in our large-scale healthy population with intellectual ability and episodic memory, whose impairment contributes to key symptoms of schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. Taken together, our results suggest that the common spatial pattern of abnormalities observed in these two disorders, which emerge at opposite ends of the life spectrum, might be influenced by the timing of their separate and distinct pathological processes in disrupting healthy cerebral development and aging, respectively.

Douaud G, Groves AR, Tamnes CK, Westlye LT, Duff EP, Engvig A, Walhovd KB, James A, Gass A, Monsch AU, Matthews PM, Fjell AM, Smith SM, Johansen-Berg H.
A common brain network links development, aging, and vulnerability to disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (PNAS), 2014 Nov 24. pii: 201410378

Data

• GM average across all 484 healthy subjects - in which the "last in, first out" (LIFO) component IC4 is found:
  • GM_mean_484_LIFO.nii.gz
• GM average across all 120 subjects of the Alzheimer's disease cohort (AD):
  • GM_mean_120_AD.nii.gz
• GM average across all 24 subjects and two timepoints of the adolescent-onset schizophrenia cohort (AOS):
  • GM_mean_24x2timepoints_AOS.nii.gz

• The 3 Z/t-maps (positive values) for the LIFO component (inverted-U component IC4), AD and AOS structural abnormalities:
  • LIFO.nii.gz
  • AD.nii.gz
  • AOS.nii.gz