Title: “Unique Effects of Age and Fitness on White Matter Microstructural Integrity.”
It is well known that white matter microstructural integrity declines with increasing age. However, evidence suggests that improved cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) may mitigate this decline. Specifically, higher-fit older adults tend to show preserved white matter microstructural integrity compared to their lower-fit counterparts. Nonetheless, it is still an open question as to what extent fitness and aging independently have on the matter of integrity across the entire adult lifespan. Using diffusion weighted imaging, Dr. Clements and her fellow researchers assessed the impact of CRF, age, and their interaction on fractional anisotropy (FA) in a large sample of adults aged 25-75. After orthogonalizing age and fitness, they found unique effects of age, fitness, and their interaction on FA across 27 bilateral white matter regions. As expected, age was negatively associated with FA, and fitness was positively associated with FA. Dr. Clements will further discuss the top 3 factors the team chose for further analysis to help reduce the number of FA comparisons on white matter regions of the brain. As well as how these analyses suggest that aging and fitness uniquely impact white matter microstructural integrity in unique regions and that these relationships are mediated by cerebrovascular health.
