Way K. W. Lau, Mei Kei Leung, Andrew C. K. Law, Tatia M. C. Lee
Abstract
Cortisol homeostasis is important for healthy brain and cognitive aging. The aim of the current study is to investigate the role of serum cortisol levels in the relationship between regional brain volumes and cognitive processing speed in a group of cognitively normal elderly subjects. Forty-one healthy elderly participants were from a parallel longitudinal study. The reported data in this study reflects baseline measurements. Whole-brain anatomical scanning was performed using a 3.0 Tesla Philips Medical Systems Achieva scanner. Cognitive processing speed was assessed by the digit-symbol and symbol search tests, from the Chinese version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-third edition (WAIS-III). Serum cortisol levels (sampled in the late morning) were measured by ELISA kits. Whole-brain regression analysis revealed that serum cortisol levels positively predicted the white matter volumes (WMV) of the right thalamus, the gray matter volumes (GMV) of the left thalamus and right cerebellar tonsil, and negatively predicted the WMV and GMV of the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) in 41 healthy elderly participants. Furthermore, serum cortisol significantly moderated the relationship between the GMV of the left MTG and processing speed, as well as the GMV of the left thalamus and processing speed. This study provided the first piece of evidence supporting serum cortisol levels in moderating the relationship between regional brain volumes and processing speed in healthy elderly subjects. This observation enriches our understanding of the role of cortisol in brain morphology and cognitive functioning.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 June 2017.
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#12,847,953
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#2,718
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
#82
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Altmetric has tracked 22,977,819 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,833 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 13.1. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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