Two researchers from the University of Texas at Dallas Center for Vital Longevity (CVL) have received a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to further their research on brain structure, function and cognition over time expandable through the use of powerful, high-resolution imaging.
Psychology professors Dr. Kristen Kennedy and Dr. Karen Rodrigue of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences have received $3.7 million from the NIH’s National Institute on Aging to expand their Dallas Area Longitudinal Lifespan Aging Study with a fourth and fifth wave of data collection. allowing them to follow study participants for fourteen years. The project already involves three cycles of data collection over a period of approximately eight years, with individuals ranging in age from 20 to 98 years.
Kennedy and Rodrigue will use one of the most powerful image processing machines in existence:; the 7-Tesla magnetic resonance scanner, one of about 35 in the U.S., at the Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC), a joint facility with UT Southwestern Medical Center, UT Dallas and other North Texas institutions. Using this 24-ton MRI machine, which can image less than a millimeter of tissue, the researchers can examine the chemical metabolites of the brain tissue.
Understanding the mechanisms behind normal versus pathological aging is a critical public health goal. Although cognitive neuroscience has made great strides in identifying key brain differences between younger and older adults, a true measure of aging requires longitudinal studies like ours that show how brain and cognitive metrics evolve over time within an individual. change, while also sampling individuals in middle adulthood. .”
Dr. Kristen Kennedy, director of the Neuroimaging of Aging and Cognition Lab at CVL
By the end of the project, researchers will have five waves of data, spanning 180 study participants.
“The next two sets of data will add new information about the metabolic factors that can determine whether a person’s brain aging trajectory is healthy or not, which can lead to pathologies such as Alzheimer’s disease,” said Rodrigue, director of the Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging Lab. at CVL.
Technological advances since research began have allowed scientists to study aging at a more detailed level as they search for biomarkers that increase understanding of individual differences in brain aging.
“The biological interactions that determine how we age are beyond the scope of traditional neuroimaging,” Kennedy said. “These neurocognitive pathways and outcomes need to be studied at micro, meso and macro scales: from cells and molecules to the tissue level we can now see at 7 Tesla, to the larger level we have observed with traditional MRI resolution.”
The new phase of the project has three objectives. The first involves looking for micro-level chemical factors in large-scale brain changes over time.
“We believe that participants who maintain previous levels of blood-oxygen signals will differ in neurometabolite signatures from those who do not,” Kennedy said. “Whether that comes in the form of high antioxidant levels, lower inflammation or other factors that we can now measure – that’s what we want to learn.”
The second goal involves measuring cortical layer thickness and myelin content to identify patterns consistent with healthy or dysfunctional aging. The ultimate goal is to begin to untangle the relationships between aging at the three scales.
The 7-T imaging will enable three new types of imaging precision for the CVL project: Myelin can be measured to gauge the health of white matter connections between brain regions; cortical thickness can be measured with greater precision to gain new insight into how the cerebral cortex ages; and neurochemical molecular and cellular brain signatures can be identified that may be strongly associated with certain aging patterns.
“We will measure regional brain concentrations of several neurometabolites, including antioxidants such as glutathione, the neurotransmitters gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and glutamate, neuroinflammation markers, extra amino acids and more,” Kennedy said. “This opportunity to bridge gaps in knowledge between fields and across spatial scales is extremely exciting.”
Rodrigue emphasized that major advances in aging research are only possible with long-term, longitudinal studies, which by design must include multiple funding awards.
“With this continued support from NIH, we can now test hypotheses about the health biomarkers and the specific patterns of brain aging that together predict successful cognitive aging in old age, as well as the patterns underlying the progression from healthy to pathological aging.” Rodrigue said.
Rodrigue and Kennedy also highlighted the critical contributions that colleagues at UT Southwestern will make to the project.
“This research is only possible because of the collaboration we have with the excellent scientists at UT Southwestern, namely [AIRC director] Dr. Anke Henning, a world-renowned expert in spectroscopy and ultra-high field imaging; [AIRC assistant professor] Dr. Jiaen Liu, whose expertise in submillimeter structural MRI is critical; And [psychiatry associate professor] Dr. Elena Ivleva, with her clinical knowledge of biomarkers for psychiatric and neurological diseases,” said Kennedy. “This is an exciting team to be able to work with.”
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