Association Between Vision and Brain Cortical Thickness in a Community-Dwelling Elderly Cohort

Chloé Chamard; Jerome J Maller; Nicolas Menjot; Eloi Debourdeau; Virginie Nael; Karen Ritchie; Isabelle Carriere; Vincent Daien

doi:10.2147/EB.S358384

Association Between Vision and Brain Cortical Thickness in a Community-Dwelling Elderly Cohort

Eye Brain. 2022 Jul 14:14:71-82. doi: 10.2147/EB.S358384. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Chloé Chamard^{1

2}, Jerome J Maller^{3

4}, Nicolas Menjot⁵, Eloi Debourdeau¹, Virginie Nael⁶, Karen Ritchie^{2

7}, Isabelle Carriere^#², Vincent Daien^#^{1

2

8}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Ophthalmology, Gui de Chauliac Hospital, Montpellier, F-34000, France.
² Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier INM, University Montpellier, INSERM, Montpellier, F-34091, France.
³ General Electric Healthcare, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
⁴ Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
⁵ Department of Neuroradiology, Gui de Chauliac Hospital, Montpellier, F-34000, France.
⁶ Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, UMR 1219, University Bordeaux, INSERM, Bordeaux, F-33000, France.
⁷ Department of Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
⁸ The Save Sight Institute, Sydney Medical School, the University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: Visual impairment is a major cause of disability and impairment of cognitive function in older people. Brain structural changes associated with visual function impairment are not well understood. The objective of this study was to assess the association between visual function and cortical thickness in older adults.

Methods: Participants were selected from the French population-based ESPRIT cohort of 2259 community-dwelling adults ≥65 years old enrolled between 1999 and 2001. We considered visual function and brain MRI images at the 12-year follow-up in participants who were right-handed and free of dementia and/or stroke, randomly selected from the whole cohort. High-resolution structural T1-weighted brain scans acquired with a 3-Tesla scanner. Regional reconstruction and segmentation involved using the FreeSurfer image-analysis suite.

Results: A total of 215 participants were included (mean [SD] age 81.8 [3.7] years; 53.0% women): 30 (14.0%) had central vision loss and 185 (86.0%) normal central vision. Vision loss was associated with thinner cortical thickness in the right insula (within the lateral sulcus of the brain) as compared with the control group (mean thickness 2.38 [0.04] vs 2.50 [0.03] mm, 4.8% thinning, p_corrected= 0.04) after adjustment for age, sex, lifetime depression and cardiovascular disease.

Conclusion: The present study describes a significant thinning of the right insular cortex in older adults with vision loss. The insula subserves a wide variety of functions in humans ranging from sensory and affective processing to high-level cognitive processing. Reduced insula thickness associated with vision loss may increase cognitive burden in the ageing brain.

Keywords: MRI; brain; cortical thickness; morphometry; vision; visual function.

Grants and funding

This CRESCENDO study was carried out with the financial support of the ANR – Agence Nationale de la Recherche (MALZ-007-01 — The French National Research Agency — and grants from the “Chercheur d’Avenir” (R12028FF) and Aide à la Recherche en Partenariat avec les Entreprises (ARPE; RPH12007F) allocated by the Languedoc Roussillon administrative regional district (France).