As Time Ticks, Does Your Brain Pick Sides? Exploring Age-Related Shifts in Hemispheric Asymmetry (21610)
Hemispheric brain asymmetries exist early on in life but may change over time. However, there is no consensus on whether asymmetries become weaker or stronger and which brain regions are affected. Here we set out to further explore age-related changes in brain asymmetry, with particular focus on local gray matter asymmetry. For this purpose, we selected 2,324 participants (1,151 women / 1,173 men), ranging between 47 and 80 years of age, from the UK Biobank. Each participant was scanned twice; the time between baseline and follow-up scans ranged between 1 and 7 years (mean 2.4 years). Analyses were conducted using voxel-based morphometry and running the longitudinal pipeline as implemented in the CAT12 toolbox. After calculating an asymmetry index (AI) at each voxel, the resulting images were smoothed, and the smoothed voxel-wise AI values were converted to absolute AI values. The absolute AI values at baseline were then subtracted from the ones at follow-up. Analysing the resulting AI difference images, most brain areas showed no significant change in asymmetry over time. Notwithstanding, there were a few regions where asymmetry significantly increased (e.g., medial frontal and orbito-frontal cortex, posterior parietal cortex, insula, and cerebellum) or decreased (e.g., occipital cortex, inferior parietal cortex, and posterior temporal cortex). In conclusion, albeit both increases and decreases in asymmetry are evident, these changes are confined to only a few brain regions. Overall, brain asymmetry seems to remain relatively stable, which might be attributable to the rather narrow time frame examined here.