Brain structural covariances in the ageing brain in the UK Biobank

Brain structural covariances or pairwise correlations describe how morphologic properties of brain regions are related to one another across individuals. Although it is reported that brain structural covariance changes during brain development, it is not clear how structural covariance relates to the ageing process. Here we investigated the human brain structural covariances of cortical thickness and subcortical volumes in the ageing brain and their associations with age, cognition, and longevity polygenic risk score (longevity-PRS) by using cross-sectional data from the UK Biobank (N = 42075, aged 45-83 years, M/F=19752 /22323). The sample of participants was divided into 84 non-overlapping groups based on their age. The older the age group, the greater the variability in the whole brain structural covariance. However, there was a differential rate of age-related increase of variance between males and females. The variance of females started lower than those of males and then increased with age with a greater gradient than that of males. There was a consistent and significant enrichment of pairwise correlations within the occipital lobe in ageing process. The cortical thickness and subcortical covariances in older groups were significantly different from those in the youngest group. Sixty-two of the total 528 pairs of cortical thickness correlations and 10 of the total 21 pairs of subcortical volume correlations were significantly associated with age after Bonferroni correction. Specifically, with an increasing age, most decreased cortical thickness correlations were found between the regions within the frontal lobe as well as between the frontal lobe regions and regions in other lobes, while pairwise correlations within occipital lobe regions were all strengthening. Most of these correlations were also associated with global cognition and weakly associated with longevity-PRS. These findings revealed that the structural covariance was not stable during ageing. Given the thinning of the cortex and the volumetric reduction of subcortical structures seen in the ageing process, an increased pairwise correlation between the brain regions in the older brain suggested a strengthened coordinated decline between the brain regions involved. However, some of the brain regions demonstrated a differentiated rate of decline which was shown as the inversed or reduced pairwise correlations between these regions.