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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Karoline LeibergORCiD, Dr Beth Little, Professor Peter TaylorORCiD, Professor Yujiang WangORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press. Characterizing changes in cortical morphology across the lifespan is fundamental for both research and clinical applications. Most studies report a monotonic decrease in commonly used morphometrics, such as cortical thickness and volume, with only subtle regional variations in the rate of decline. However, these findings are limited to a single length scale. Here, we delineate changes across the lifespan in multiscale morphometrics. We applied multiscale morphometric analysis to structural MRI from subjects aged 6 to 88 years from Nathan Kline Institute Rockland Sample (n = 833) and Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (n = 641), and derived population-level lifespan trajectories at multiple length scales. Lifespan trajectories show diverging and even opposing trends at different spatial scales. Larger scales (1.86 mm) displayed the strongest changes across the lifespan (up to 60%) when considering entire cortical hemispheres. Lobal variations also became more pronounced in scales over 0.7 mm. In a proof-of-principle brain age prediction context, multiscale morphometrics provided additional predictive value, boosting the adjusted R2 of the model from 0.35 to 0.7. Our study provides a comprehensive multiscale description of cortical morphology across the lifespan, forming foundations for normative models to identify multiscale morphological abnormalities. Our results reveal the complementary information contained in different spatial scales, suggesting that morphometrics should be considered at multiple length scales.
Author(s): Leiberg K, Blattner T, Little B, Mello VBB, de Moraes FHP, Rummel C, Taylor PN, Mota B, Wang Y
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Cerebral Cortex
Year: 2025
Volume: 35
Issue: 6
Online publication date: 23/06/2025
Acceptance date: 16/05/2025
Date deposited: 09/07/2025
ISSN (print): 1047-3211
ISSN (electronic): 1460-2199
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaf154
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhaf154
Data Access Statement: The analysis was carried out on public datasets, see http://rocklandsample.org/ for NKI and https://www.cam-can.org/ for CamCAN. The coarse-graining of cortical surfaces was performed using code available on github: https://github.com/cnnp-lab/CorticalFoldingAnalysisTools/blob/master/Scales/.
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