Association between subcortical volume changes and longitudinal cognitive measures in older adults

Abstract

This study investigates the association between longitudinal cognitive measures and volumetric changes of subcortical volumes in healthy older adults using UK Biobank data. Our goals are: 1) Identifying subgroups of volumetric change in subcortical regions using structural Magnetic Resonance Imaging (sMRI); and 2) explore whether changes in cognitive performance over time correlate with these volumetric alterations. We analyzed longitudinal cognitive assessments, including measures of Fluid Intelligence (FI), Reaction Time (RT), Numeric Memory (NM), Symbol Digit Substitution (SDS), the first segment of the Trail Making Test (TMT-A), and Prospective Memory (PM). We then compared scores with repeated sMRI scans to assess changes in subcortical volumes. We found that TMT-A and SDS results are significantly different between adults who showed an increase versus atrophy in their subcortical volumes.