Age associated changes in cortical structure and complexity

Reductions in cortical tissue volume have been extensively investigated in healthy ageing , and have been linked to declines across multiple cognitive domains. Studies typically use voxel-based morphometry as a means of objectively assessing the degree of atrophy across the whole brain, with some regions shown to be particularly affected. However, additional measures which reflect the complexity of the cortical tissue may provide sensitive markers of structural changes, and offer additional information to that provided by volumetric analyses . In this study we focus on investigating age effects on volumetric and surface based measures across a large sample of healthy adults, alongside effects of gender.