Age-related morphology trends of cortical sulci

Abstract

The age-related trends of the width and the depth of major cortical sulci were studied in normal adults. Ninety healthy subjects (47 males, 43 females) age 20-82 years were evaluated. Measurements of average sulcal width and depth in 14 prominent sulcal structures per hemisphere were performed with high-resolution anatomical MRI. The average sulcal width increased at a rate of about 0.7 mm/decade, while the average sulcal depth decreased at a rate of about 0.4 mm/decade. Sulcal age-related trends were found to be highly influenced by gender in the superior temporal, collateral, and cingulate sulci (P < 0.05), with males showing more pronounced age-related change in sulcal width than females. Sulcal structures located in multimodal cortical areas showed more profound age-related changes than sulcal structures in unimodal cortical areas (P < 0.05).

Figure 1

BrainVisa sulcal extraction and identification pipelines. Sulcal extraction pipeline identifies cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum (A). Next, homotopic erosion and a crevasse detector were used to reconstruct sulcal surface as the medial surface of the two opposing gyral banks (B). Sulcal identification pipeline uses a congregation of 500 artificial neural network‐based pattern classifiers to reconstruct (C) and identify (D) sulcal landmarks in accordance with a learning performed on 26 expertly segmented datasets.

Figure 2

Measurements were performed for the following sulcal structures: Lateral View (top): superior frontal (A), inferior frontal (B), central (C), postcentral (D), intraparietal (E), lateral and transverse occipital and lunar sulcus (F), sylvian fissure (G), superior temporal (H), and inferior temporal (I). Medial View (middle): anterior cingulate and posterior cingulate sulci were combined (J) and parieto‐occipital fissure. Inferior View (bottom): orbital‐frontal (L), olfactory (M), collateral and rhinal sulci were combined (N).

Figure 3

A: Intersulcal CSF was bounded by the opposing GM banks of gyri and by the convex hull of the cortex. B: Average sulcal width is calculated in the normal direction to sulcal skeleton (dotted line). C: Average sulcal depth is calculated as the Euclidean distance between superficial and deep ends of the sulcal surface.

Figure 4

Scatterplots and trendlines for sulcal width (red) and sulcal depth (green) measurements plotted vs. subject's age. The vertical scale is 0.0–12.0 mm for sulcal width vs. age plots and 0.0–17.0 mm for sulcal depth vs. age plots.

Figure 5

Gender‐dependence of the age‐related sulcal width trends for collateral (top), cingulate (middle), and superior temporal (bottom) sulci.

Figure 6

Average global spatial normalization scaling coefficients for each decade following transformation into the Talairach frame.