TY - JOUR
T1 - Education is associated with sub-regions of the hippocampus and the amygdala vulnerable to neuropathologies of Alzheimer’s disease
AU - Tang, Xiaoying
AU - Varma, Vijay R.
AU - Miller, Michael I.
AU - Carlson, Michelle C.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge the contribution of all participants who gave their time to be involved in this study. Without their service and contributions, this research would not be possible. We would also like to acknowledge Timothy Brown for manually creating the hippocampus and the amygdala segmentations of the 16 atlases used in automatically segmenting the 110 MRI scans of this study. This study was supported by the Johns Hopkins Neurobehavioral Research Unit and a supplement from the National Institute on Aging (BSR Grant P01 AG027735-03). This study was also partially supported by the National Institute of Health/National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering P41 EB015909. Xiaoying Tang is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81501546) and the SYSU-CMU Shunde International Joint Research Institute Start-up Grant (20150306). Vijay R. Varma was supported by a fellowship from the Epidemiology and Biostatistics of Aging Training Grant (5T32AG000247). Michael I. Miller owns an equal share in Anatomyworks LLC. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by the Johns Hopkins University, in accordance with it conflict of interest policy.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
PY - 2017/4/1
Y1 - 2017/4/1
N2 - We evaluated the correlation of educational attainment with structural volume and shape morphometry of the bilateral hippocampi and amygdalae in a sample of 110 non-demented, older adults at elevated sociodemographic risk for cognitive and functional declines. In both men and women, no significant education–volume correlation was detected for either structure. However, when performing shape analysis, we observed regionally specific associations with education after adjusting for age, intracranial volume, and race. By sub-dividing the hippocampus and the amygdala into compatible subregions, we found that education was positively associated with size variations in the CA1 and subiculum subregions of the hippocampus and the basolateral subregion of the amygdala (p < 0.05). In addition, we detected a greater left versus right asymmetric pattern in the shape-education correlation for the hippocampus but not the amygdala. This asymmetric association was largely observed in men versus women. These findings suggest that education in youth may exert direct and indirect influences on brain reserve in regions that are most vulnerable to the neuropathologies of aging, dementia, and specifically, Alzheimer disease.
AB - We evaluated the correlation of educational attainment with structural volume and shape morphometry of the bilateral hippocampi and amygdalae in a sample of 110 non-demented, older adults at elevated sociodemographic risk for cognitive and functional declines. In both men and women, no significant education–volume correlation was detected for either structure. However, when performing shape analysis, we observed regionally specific associations with education after adjusting for age, intracranial volume, and race. By sub-dividing the hippocampus and the amygdala into compatible subregions, we found that education was positively associated with size variations in the CA1 and subiculum subregions of the hippocampus and the basolateral subregion of the amygdala (p < 0.05). In addition, we detected a greater left versus right asymmetric pattern in the shape-education correlation for the hippocampus but not the amygdala. This asymmetric association was largely observed in men versus women. These findings suggest that education in youth may exert direct and indirect influences on brain reserve in regions that are most vulnerable to the neuropathologies of aging, dementia, and specifically, Alzheimer disease.
KW - Amygdala
KW - Brain reserve
KW - Cognitive reserve
KW - Education
KW - Hippocampus
KW - Shape
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U2 - 10.1007/s00429-016-1287-9
DO - 10.1007/s00429-016-1287-9
M3 - Article
C2 - 27535407
AN - SCOPUS:84982289284
SN - 1863-2653
VL - 222
SP - 1469
EP - 1479
JO - Brain Structure and Function
JF - Brain Structure and Function
IS - 3
ER -