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. 2019 Jan;40(1):34-52.
doi: 10.1002/hbm.24353. Epub 2018 Oct 6.

Amygdala subnuclei and healthy cognitive aging

Arash Aghamohammadi-Sereshki  1 , Stanislau Hrybouski  1 , Scott Travis  1 , Yushan Huang  2 , Fraser Olsen  2 , Rawle Carter  2 , Richard Camicioli  1   3 , Nikolai V Malykhin  1   2
Affiliations

Amygdala subnuclei and healthy cognitive aging

Arash Aghamohammadi-Sereshki et al. Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 Jan.

Abstract

Amygdala is a group of nuclei involved in the neural circuits of fear, reward learning, and stress. The main goal of this magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study was to investigate the relationship between age and the amygdala subnuclei volumes in a large cohort of healthy individuals. Our second goal was to determine effects of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) polymorphisms on the amygdala structure. One hundred and twenty-six healthy participants (18-85 years old) were recruited for this study. MRI datasets were acquired on a 4.7 T system. Amygdala was manually segmented into five major subdivisions (lateral, basal, accessory basal nuclei, and cortical, and centromedial groups). The BDNF (methionine and homozygous valine) and APOE genotypes (ε2, homozygous ε3, and ε4) were obtained using single nucleotide polymorphisms. We found significant nonlinear negative associations between age and the total amygdala and its lateral, basal, and accessory basal nuclei volumes, while the cortical amygdala showed a trend. These age-related associations were found only in males but not in females. Centromedial amygdala did not show any relationship with age. We did not observe any statistically significant effects of APOE and BDNF polymorphisms on the amygdala subnuclei volumes. In contrast to APOE ε2 allele carriers, both older APOE ε4 and ε3 allele carriers had smaller lateral, basal, accessory basal nuclei volumes compared to their younger counterparts. This study indicates that amygdala subnuclei might be nonuniformly affected by aging and that age-related association might be gender specific.

Keywords: aging; amygdala subnuclei; apolipoprotein E (APOE); brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF); magnetic resonance imaging.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Segmentation of the amygdala (AG) subnuclei on a (a) sagittal, (b–f) coronal, and (g,h) axial views is shown on T2‐weighted FSE images with inverted contrast. Three‐dimensional reconstructions of the AG and its subnuclei from a healthy volunteer are shown from (i) the superior, (j) the lateral, and (k) the anterior views. Lateral (La) nucleus is outlined in green, basal (B) nucleus is outlined in dark blue, accessory basal (AB) nucleus is outlined in purple, cortical (Co) group is outlined in yellow, and centromedial (CeM) group is outlined in red. Dashed lines indicate the corresponding slice locations [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 2
Figure 2
Flow chart depicting bootstrap methodology used to model the AG ROIs' relationship to age and their prediction R 2 values [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 3
Figure 3
Flow chart depicting permutation methodology used to build null distributions to assess the statistical significance of the AG ROIs' (a) overall model significance, age, and sex effects, as well as (b) age by sex interactions. LR: likelihood ratio [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 4
Figure 4
Regression plot showing the relationship between age and the ICV‐adjusted total AG volume. Model‐averaged estimates for men (blue) and women (red) are shown separately. Shaded areas represent the 95% bootstrap percentile confidence interval for each fit [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 5
Figure 5
Regression plots showing the relationship between age and the ICV‐adjusted volumes of the AG subnuclei groups: (a) basolateral (BLA), (b) Co, and (c) CeM subnuclei groups. Model‐averaged estimates for men (blue) and women (red) are shown separately. Shaded areas represent the 95% bootstrap percentile confidence interval for each fit. P values are corrected for multiple comparisons [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 6
Figure 6
Regression plots showing the relationship between age and the ICV‐adjusted volumes of BLA nuclei including (a) La, (b) B, and (c) AB. Model‐averaged estimates for men (blue) and women (red) are shown separately. Shaded areas represent the 95% bootstrap percentile confidence interval for each fit. P values are corrected for multiple comparisons [Color figure can be viewed at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com]
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