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. 2022 Jul 14:14:71-82.
doi: 10.2147/EB.S358384. eCollection 2022.

Association Between Vision and Brain Cortical Thickness in a Community-Dwelling Elderly Cohort

Chloé Chamard  1   2 , Jerome J Maller  3   4 , Nicolas Menjot  5 , Eloi Debourdeau  1 , Virginie Nael  6 , Karen Ritchie  2   7 , Isabelle Carriere #  2 , Vincent Daien #  1   2   8
Affiliations

Association Between Vision and Brain Cortical Thickness in a Community-Dwelling Elderly Cohort

Chloé Chamard et al. Eye Brain. .

Abstract

Purpose: Visual impairment is a major cause of disability and impairment of cognitive function in older people. Brain structural changes associated with visual function impairment are not well understood. The objective of this study was to assess the association between visual function and cortical thickness in older adults.

Methods: Participants were selected from the French population-based ESPRIT cohort of 2259 community-dwelling adults ≥65 years old enrolled between 1999 and 2001. We considered visual function and brain MRI images at the 12-year follow-up in participants who were right-handed and free of dementia and/or stroke, randomly selected from the whole cohort. High-resolution structural T1-weighted brain scans acquired with a 3-Tesla scanner. Regional reconstruction and segmentation involved using the FreeSurfer image-analysis suite.

Results: A total of 215 participants were included (mean [SD] age 81.8 [3.7] years; 53.0% women): 30 (14.0%) had central vision loss and 185 (86.0%) normal central vision. Vision loss was associated with thinner cortical thickness in the right insula (within the lateral sulcus of the brain) as compared with the control group (mean thickness 2.38 [0.04] vs 2.50 [0.03] mm, 4.8% thinning, pcorrected= 0.04) after adjustment for age, sex, lifetime depression and cardiovascular disease.

Conclusion: The present study describes a significant thinning of the right insular cortex in older adults with vision loss. The insula subserves a wide variety of functions in humans ranging from sensory and affective processing to high-level cognitive processing. Reduced insula thickness associated with vision loss may increase cognitive burden in the ageing brain.

Keywords: MRI; brain; cortical thickness; morphometry; vision; visual function.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest in relation to this work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flow-chart of the participants in the study.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Cortical thinning areas associated with vision loss (ANCOVA test). In the right hemisphere, significant thinning of the insular cortex (1). The thinning of visual cortex (2) and visual associative pathway (3) do not resist to FDR correction. In the left hemisphere, significant thinning of the visual associative pathway (3’). The thinning of insular (1’) and visual cortex (2’) do not resist to FDR correction.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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