Semantic retrieval over time in the aging brain: Structural evidence of hippocampal contribution

Investigation of brain volume changes associated with aging: Results from the fourth research on osteoarthritis/osteoporosis against disability survey

AIM

This study aims to investigate the impact of aging on brain volume among community residents in Japan, focusing on trends over time and specific brain structures.

METHODS

We analyzed data from the fourth survey (2015-2016) of the Research on Osteoarthritis/Osteoporosis Against Disability project, encompassing 2146 community residents from Japan's mountainous and coastal regions. A total of 1755 participants (81.8% of the baseline population) underwent extensive data collection including lifestyle and health questionnaires, anthropometric measurements and brain magnetic resonance imaging. The imaging data were processed to examine correlations between total brain volume, gray matter volume (GMV), white matter volume (WMV), cerebrospinal fluid volume and participant age.

RESULTS

Analysis showed significant sex differences in total brain volume, with GMV demonstrating a strong negative correlation with age - more pronounced than the moderate negative correlation seen in WMV. Cerebrospinal fluid volume exhibited a strong positive correlation with age. Notably, specific brain regions such as the bilateral amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus and primary motor cortex showed significant age-related volume reductions.

CONCLUSION

This study confirms that GMV and WMV are smaller in older individuals in the Japanese population, with more pronounced differences in GMV. The amygdala, hippocampus, thalamus and primary motor cortex were particularly affected. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2025; 25: 279-286.

Acoustic assessment in mandarin-speaking Parkinson's disease patients and disease progression monitoring and brain impairment within the speech subsystem

Approximately 90% of Parkinson's patients (PD) suffer from dysarthria. However, there is currently a lack of research on acoustic measurements and speech impairment patterns among Mandarin-speaking individuals with PD. This study aims to assess the diagnosis and disease monitoring possibility in Mandarin-speaking PD patients through the recommended speech paradigm for non-tonal languages, and to explore the anatomical and functional substrates. We examined total of 160 native Mandarin-speaking Chinese participants consisting of 80 PD patients, 40 healthy controls (HC), and 40 MRI controls. We screened the optimal acoustic metric combination for PD diagnosis. Finally, we used the objective metrics to predict the patient's motor status using the Naïve Bayes model and analyzed the correlations between cortical thickness, subcortical volumes, functional connectivity, and network properties. Comprehensive acoustic screening based on prosodic, articulation, and phonation abnormalities allows differentiation between HC and PD with an area under the curve of 0.931. Patients with slowed reading exhibited atrophy of the fusiform gyrus (FDR p = 0.010, R = 0.391), reduced functional connectivity between the fusiform gyrus and motor cortex, and increased nodal local efficiency (NLE) and nodal efficiency (NE) in bilateral pallidum. Patients with prolonged pauses demonstrated atrophy in the left hippocampus, along with decreased NLE and NE. The acoustic assessment in Mandarin proves effective in diagnosis and disease monitoring for Mandarin-speaking PD patients, generalizing standardized acoustic guidelines beyond non-tonal languages. The speech impairment in Mandarin-speaking PD patients not only involves motor aspects of speech but also encompasses the cognitive processes underlying language generation.

Gray matter volume and within-task verbal fluency performance among older adults

The current study examined the relationship between gray matter volume (GMV) and rate of word generation over the course of three consecutive 20-sec intervals in 60-sec letter and category verbal fluency (VF) tasks. Attenuated rate of within-person word generation in VF provides incremental information beyond total scores and predicts increased risk of incident Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). No studies to date, however, have determined the structural neural substrates underlying word generation rate in VF. Participants were 70 community-residing adults ≥ 65 years, who completed the letter and category VF tasks and a 3 T structural MRI scan. Linear mixed effects models (LMEMs) were used to determine the moderating effect of GMV on word generation rate. Whole brain voxel-wise LMEMs, adjusted for age, gender, education, Wide-Range Achievement Test - reading subtest score (WRAT3), and global health score, were run using permutation methods to correct for multiple comparisons. Lower GMV, primarily in frontal regions (superior frontal, rostral middle frontal, frontal pole, medial orbitofrontal, and pars orbitalis), were related to attenuated word generation rate, especially for letter VF. We propose that lower frontal GMV underlies inefficient executive word search processes reflected by attenuated word generation slope in letter VF amongst older adults.

Factors associated with verbal fluency in older adults living with HIV in West Africa: A longitudinal study

OBJECTIVE

Verbal fluency decline, observed both in aging and HIV infection, has been related to lower quality of life. This study aimed to evaluate the factors associated with categorical fluency in people living with HIV (PLHIV) aged ≥60 years living in West Africa.

METHODS

In this longitudinal study, PLHIV aged ≥60 years, on antiretroviral therapy (ART) for ≥6 months were included in three clinics (two in Côte d'Ivoire, one in Senegal) participating in the West Africa International epidemiological Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) collaboration. Categorical fluency was evaluated with the Isaacs Set Test at 60 s at baseline and 2 years later. Factors associated with verbal fluency baseline performance and annual rates of changes were evaluated using multivariate linear regression models.

RESULTS

Ninety-seven PLHIV were included with 41 of them (42%) having a 2-year follow-up visit. The median age was 64 (62-67), 45.4% were female, and 89.7% had an undetectable viral load. The median annual change in categorical fluency scores was -0.9 (IQR: -2.7 to 1.8). Low baseline categorical fluency performance and its decline were associated with older age and being a female. Low educational level was associated with low baseline categorical fluency performance but not with its decline. Categorical fluency decline was also associated with marital status and hypertension.

CONCLUSIONS

Among older West African PLHIV, usual socio-demographic variables and hypertension were the main factors associated with low categorical fluency performance and/or its decline. Interventions that focus on supporting cardiometabolic health are highly recommended to prevent cognitive disorders in PLHIV.

Strategies and cognitive reserve to preserve lexical production in aging

In the absence of any neuropsychiatric condition, older adults may show declining performance in several cognitive processes and among them, in retrieving and producing words, reflected in slower responses and even reduced accuracy compared to younger adults. To overcome this difficulty, healthy older adults implement compensatory strategies, which are the focus of this paper. We provide a review of mainstream findings on deficient mechanisms and possible neurocognitive strategies used by older adults to overcome the deleterious effects of age on lexical production. Moreover, we present findings on genetic and lifestyle factors that might either be protective or risk factors of cognitive impairment in advanced age. We propose that "aging-modulating factors" (AMF) can be modified, offering prevention opportunities against aging effects. Based on our review and this proposition, we introduce an integrative neurocognitive model of mechanisms and compensatory strategies for lexical production in older adults (entitled Lexical Access and Retrieval in Aging, LARA). The main hypothesis defended in LARA is that cognitive aging evolves heterogeneously and involves complementary domain-general and domain-specific mechanisms, with substantial inter-individual variability, reflected at behavioral, cognitive, and brain levels. Furthermore, we argue that the ability to compensate for the effect of cognitive aging depends on the amount of reserve specific to each individual which is, in turn, modulated by the AMF. Our conclusion is that a variety of mechanisms and compensatory strategies coexist in the same individual to oppose the effect of age. The role of reserve is pivotal for a successful coping with age-related changes and future research should continue to explore the modulating role of AMF.

Gait Speed and Evolution of Verbal Fluencies in Frail or Prefrail Older People with Type 2 Diabetes. A Pilot Study

OBJECTIVES

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is a risk factor of frailty and cognitive impairment. Impaired gait in older people is associated with incident vascular dementia. We aimed to assess whether in frail or prefrail older subjects with T2D, lower gait speed can be associated with faster cognitive decline.

DESIGN

Case-control study nested in a large randomized control trial (RCT, MID-frail); post hoc analysis.

SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS

Older frail and prefrail subjects (>70y) with T2D and with no history of cognitive problems were enrolled in a single recruiting center. Participants were divided into two groups depending on their walking speed - above (fast walkers) or below (slow walkers) using a cut off of 1 m/sec.

MEASURE

Cognitive function was assessed at baseline and during follow-up with the MMSE, category and letter fluencies at 15 sec (initiation) and 15-60 sec (late).

RESULTS

48 subjects were included, 22 were fast walkers, 26 were slow walkers. The mean follow-up was 60.9 (SD 17.5) weeks. The baseline 0-15 sec letter fluency was higher in fast walkers (p=0.008). There was no difference at baseline with MMSE scores and category fluency. The MID-Frail intervention did not change the evolution of any cognitive changes. Comparisons were adjusted for age, sex and baseline performance, and showed a steeper decline of category fluency score in slow walkers (fast walkers +0.04 (-1.49 to1.56) compared with -0.89 (-2.15 to 0.38), p=0.049) with a moderate effect size.

CONCLUSION

In frail or prefrail older adults with diabetes, we observed a decline in category fluency in those with low gait speed.

Acute stress enhances general-knowledge semantic memory

Acute psychological stress consistently impairs episodic memory, which consists of memory for events that are associated with a specific context. However, researchers have not yet established how stress influences semantic memory, which consists of general knowledge that is devoid of context. In the present study, participants either underwent stress induction or a control task prior to taking a trivia test that was designed to measure semantic memory. In contrast to the wealth of prior research on episodic memory, we found that stress enhanced semantic-memory retrieval. Supporting this finding, higher cortisol reactivity to stress was associated with better performance on the trivia test. Together with the results from previous studies of episodic memory, our findings suggest that stress differentially influences memory retrieval, depending on the degree to which the retrieval of a given memory relies on medial-temporal, neocortical, and striatal brain regions.

Aging modulates fronto-temporal cortical interactions during lexical production. A dynamic causal modeling study

In this dynamic causal modeling (DCM) study, we evaluated the effect of age on the effective connectivity of a cerebral network involved in lexical production. Younger and older adults performed an object naming task during fMRI. The DCM was used to explore the interactions between four regions of interest: the occipital cortex, OC; the lateral temporal cortex, LTC; the medial temporal cortex, MTC; and the inferior frontal cortex, IFC. We mainly focused on the modulation of the fronto-temporal interaction, according to the hypothesis that aging requires strategies that modulate the access to the semantic knowledge, either through a neural reserve mechanism (increased MTC-LTC connectivity) or through a neural compensation mechanism (supplementary IFC-MTC connectivity). For younger adults, our results indicated a bi-directional interaction between the left IFC and LTC suggesting a typical activation related to lexico-semantic representations. For older adults, our results reveal the existence of bi-directional interaction between the IFC and MTC, but not between the IFC and LTC - which in turn suggests that older adults adapt a new strategy, via supplemental access to conceptual access and semantic retrieval processes. This neural compensation strategy would be facilitated by a top-down mechanism from the IFC to the MTC. We discuss our results in the context of the possible additional strategies used by older compared to younger adults, to retrieve and produce words.

Salience Network and Depressive Severities in Parkinson's Disease with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Structural Covariance Network Analysis

Purpose: In Parkinson’s disease with mild cognitive impairment (PD-MCI), we investigated the clinical significance of salience network (SN) in depression and cognitive performance.

Methods: Seventy seven PD-MCI patients that fulfilled multi-domain and non-amnestic subtype were included. Gray matter structural covariance networks were constructed by 3D T1-magnetic resonance imaging and seed based analysis. The patients were divided into two groups by psychiatric interviews and screening of Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS): PD-MCI with depression (PD-MCI-D) or without depression (PD-MCI-ND). The seed or peak cluster volume, or the significant differences in the regression slopes in each seed-peak cluster correlation, were used to evaluate the significance with the neurobehavioral scores.

Results: This study is the first to demonstrate that the PD-MCI-ND group presented a larger number of voxels of structural covariance in SN than the PD-MCI-D group. The right fronto-insular seed volumes and the peak cluster of left lingual gyrus showed significant inverse correlation with the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS; r = -0.231, P = 0.046).

Conclusions: This study is the first to validate the clinical significance of the SN in PD-MCI-D. The right insular seed value and the SN correlated with the severity of depression in PD-MCI.

Patterns of brain atrophy associated with episodic memory and semantic fluency decline in aging

The cerebral substratum of age-related cognitive decline was evaluated in an elderly-cohort followed for 12 years (n=306). Participants, free of dementia, received neuropsychological assessments every two years and an MRI exam at baseline and four years later. Cognitive decline was evaluated on two broadly used tests to detect dementia: the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test (FCSRT), a verbal episodic memory task, and the Isaacs Set Test (IST), a semantic fluency task. Using voxel-based approach, the relationship between cognitive decline with 1/ baseline grey matter volumes and 2/ grey matter volume loss between the two scans was explored. Baseline volumes analysis revealed that FCSRT and IST declines were both associated with lower volumes of the medial temporal region. Volumes loss analysis confirmed that both declines are related to medial temporal lobe atrophy and revealed that FCSRT decline was specifically associated with atrophy of the posterior cingulate cortex whereas IST decline was specifically related to temporal pole atrophy. These results suggest that cognitive decline across aging is firstly related to structural modifications of the medial temporal lobe, followed by an atrophy in the posterior midline structures for episodic memory and an atrophy of the temporal pole for semantic fluency.

Quantitative and qualitative analysis of semantic verbal fluency in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy

INTRODUCTION

Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) perform poorly on semantic verbal fluency (SVF) tasks. Completing these tasks successfully involves multiple cognitive processes simultaneously. Therefore, quantitative analysis of SVF (number of correct words in one minute), conducted in most studies, has been found to be insufficient to identify cognitive dysfunction underlying SVF difficulties in TLE.

OBJECTIVES

To determine whether a sample of patients with TLE had SVF difficulties compared with a control group (CG), and to identify the cognitive components associated with SVF difficulties using quantitative and qualitative analysis.

METHODS

SVF was evaluated in 25 patients with TLE and 24 healthy controls; the semantic verbal fluency test included 5 semantic categories: animals, fruits, occupations, countries, and verbs. All 5 categories were analysed quantitatively (number of correct words per minute and interval of execution: 0-15, 16-30, 31-45, and 46-60seconds); the categories animals and fruits were also analysed qualitatively (clusters, cluster size, switches, perseverations, and intrusions).

RESULTS

Patients generated fewer words for all categories and intervals and fewer clusters and switches for animals and fruits than the CG (P<.01). Differences between groups were not significant in terms of cluster size and number of intrusions and perseverations (P>.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Our results suggest an association between SVF difficulties in TLE and difficulty activating semantic networks, impaired strategic search, and poor cognitive flexibility. Attention, inhibition, and working memory are preserved in these patients.