Combined effects of age and BMI are related to altered cortical thickness in adolescence and adulthood
Metadata
Show full item recordEditorial
Elsevier BV
Materia
Structural MRI Obesity Adolescent development Impulsivity
Date
2019-11-05Referencia bibliográfica
Westwater, M. L., Vilar-Lopez, R., Ziauddeen, H., Verdejo-Garcia, A., & Fletcher, P. C. (2019). Combined effects of age and BMI are related to altered cortical thickness in adolescence and adulthood. bioRxiv, 596064.
Sponsorship
This work was supported by Wellcome Trust [project grant 206368/ Z/17/Z] (PCF), the Bernard Wolfe Health Neuroscience Fund (HZ, PCF) and the Andalusian Health Service (Consejeria de Salud) [project grant P-10-HUM-6635 (NEUROECOBE)] (AVG). MLW was supported by the Cambridge Trust and NIH-Oxford Cambridge Scholars Program.Abstract
Overweight and obesity are associated with functional and structural alterations in the brain, but how these
associations change across critical developmental periods remains unknown. Here, we examined the relationship
between age, body mass index (BMI) and cortical thickness (CT) in healthy adolescents (n = 70; 14–19 y) and
adults (n = 75; 25–45 y). We also examined the relationship between adiposity, impulsivity, measured by delay
discounting (DD), and CT of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), a region key to impulse control. A significant age-by-
BMI interaction was observed in both adolescents and adults; however, the direction of this relationship differed
between age groups. In adolescents, increased age-adjusted BMI Z-score attenuated age-related CT reductions
globally and in frontal, temporal and occipital regions. In adults, increased BMI augmented age-related CT reductions,
both globally and in bilateral parietal cortex. Although DD was unrelated to adiposity in both groups,
increased DD and adiposity were both associated with reduced IFG thickness in adolescents and adults. Our
findings suggest that the known age effects on CT in adolescence and adulthood are moderated by adiposity. The
association between weight, cortical development and its functional implications would suggest that future
studies of adolescent and adult brain development take adiposity into account.