Regional Gray Matter Volumes Are Related to Concern About Falling in Older People: A Voxel-Based Morphometric Study

Article Article scientifique Article Regional Gray Matter Volumes Are Related to Concern About Falling in Older People: A Voxel-Based Morphometric Study eng 2016 author Tuerk Carola 824223 author Zhang Haobo author Sachdev Perminder author Lord Stephen R author Brodaty Henry author Wen Wei author Delbaere Kim 138-144 10.1093/gerona/glu242 25645388 1079-5006 Background. Concern about falling is common in older people. Various related psychological constructs as well as poor balance and slow gait have been associated with decreased gray matter (GM) volume in old age. The current study investigates the association between concern about falling and voxel-wise GM volumes. Methods. A total of 281 community-dwelling older people aged 70–90 years underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging. Concern about falling was assessed using Falls Efficacy Scale-International (FES-I). For each participant, voxel-wise GM volumes were generated with voxel-based morphometry and regressed on raw FES-I scores (p < .05 family-wise error corrected on cluster level). Results. FES-I scores were negatively correlated with total brain volume (r = −.212; p ≤ .001), GM volume (r = −.210; p ≤ .001), and white matter volume (r = −.155; p ≤ .001). Voxel-based morphometry analysis revealed significant negative associations between FES-I and GM volumes of (i) left cerebellum and bilateral inferior occipital gyrus (voxels-in-cluster = 2,981; p < .001) and (ii) bilateral superior frontal gyrus and left supplementary motor area (voxels-in-cluster = 1,900; p = .004). Additional adjustment for vision and physical fall risk did not alter these associations. After adjustment for anxiety, only left cerebellum and bilateral inferior occipital gyrus remained negatively associated with FES-I scores (voxels-in-cluster = 2,426; p < .001). Adjustment for neuroticism removed all associations between FES-I and GM volumes. Conclusions. Our study findings show that concern about falling is negatively associated with brain volumes in areas important for emotional control and for motor control, executive functions and visual processing in a large sample of older men and women. Regression analyses suggest that these relationships were primarily accounted for by psychological factors (generalized anxiety and neuroticism) and not by physical fall risk or vision. Accidental falls Fear of falling Aged Magnetic resonance imaging Brain atrophy Personality Neurodegeneration Psychological distress Dewey 616.8 Swiss National Science Foundation Relative contributions of experience-dependent plasticity and of ‘innate' influences on the brain and cognition 133701 CH Careers 61 Département des neurosciences cliniques 226 false 1333 Brain and Language Lab The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences 71 1 27847416-9cf2-4149-9cc4-eab5d33b5804 Article (Published version) Public Tuerk_J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci-2015.pdf 997787 application/pdf openAccess Faculté de médecine / Section de médecine clinique / Département des neurosciences cliniques

Title	Published in	Year	Views	Downloads

Regional Gray Matter Volumes Are Related to Concern About Falling in Older People: A Voxel-Based Morphometric Study	The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences	2016	545	521
Brain structural correlates of multilinguism		2016	146	3

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Tuerk, Carola