Brain morphology according to age, sex, and handedness

Sa Jin Kang; Kyeong A Kang; Han Jang; Jae Youn Lee; Kang Il Lee; Min Seok Kwoen; Jung Soo Kim; Kang Min Park

doi:10.14253/acn.2017.19.2.93

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Kang, Kang, Jang, Lee, Lee, Kwoen, Kim, and Park: Brain morphology according to age, sex, and handedness

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J Rheum Dis 2017;19(2):93-100.

Published online: 5 January 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14253/acn.2017.19.2.93

Brain morphology according to age, sex, and handedness

Sa Jin Kang¹, Kyeong A Kang¹, Han Jang¹, Jae Youn Lee¹, Kang Il Lee¹, Min Seok Kwoen¹, Jung Soo Kim¹, Kang Min Park²

Inje University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea

Department of Neurology, Inje University College of Medicine, Busan, Korea

Correspondence to Kang Min Park Department of Neurology, Haeundae Paik Hospital, Inje University College of Medicine, 875 Haeun-daero, Haeundae-gu, Busan 48108, Korea Tel: +82-51-797-1195 Fax: +82-51-797-1196 E-mail: smilepkm@hanmail.net

Received 6 January 201726 April 2017 Accepted 12 May 2017

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

초록

In this article, we review the differences of the brain morphology according to age, sex, and handedness. Age is a well-known factor affecting brain morphology. With aging, progressive reduction of brain volume is driven. Sex also has great effects on brain morphology. Although there are some reports that the differences of brain morphology may originate from the differences of weight between the 2 sexes, studies have demonstrated that there are regional differences even after the correction for weight. Handedness has long been regarded as a behavioral marker of functional asymmetry. Although there have been debates about the ef-fect of handedness on brain morphology, previous well-established studies suggest there are differences in some regions according to handedness. Even with the studies done so far, normal brain morphology is not fully understood. Therefore, studies specific for the each ethnic group and standardized methods are needed to establish a more reliable database of healthy subjects’ brain morphology.

Keywords: Brain, Magnetic resonance imaging, Demography

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Table 1.

Studies about the relationship between aging and brain morphology

Authors	Brain region	Age related results
Jernigan et al. (1991)¹¹	Anterior cingulate cortex	No significant associations to age
Resnick et al. (2003)¹²	GM, WM, total brain	GM: 3.1 cm³ decline annually
		WM: 2.4 cm³ decline annually
		Total brain: 5.4 cm³ decline annually
Grieve et al. (2005)¹⁴	Cerebral cortex Limbic structure	Accelerated loss in dorsolateral frontal cortex, pre- and post-central gyrus, and inferior and superior parietal lobes
	Paralimbic structure	No significant associations to age in limbic and paralimbic structures
Abe et al. (2008)¹⁷	Globus pallidus	No significant associations to age
Cherubini et al. (2009)⁴⁷	Basal ganglia	Decreased volume of putamen and caudate nucleus
Hughes et al. (2012)¹⁶	Thalamus	Decreased, with anterior regions generally more compromised than posterior regions

GM, gray matter; WM, white matter.

Table 2.

Studies about the relationship between sex and brain morphology

Authors	Brain region	Sex related results
DeLacoste-Utamsing et al. (1982)²⁴	Corpus callosum	Longer in females
Good et al. (2001)⁶	GM	Bigger GM volume and GM volume/ICV in males
Abe et al. (2010)²²	WM	Bigger WM volume in males
		Bigger WM volume/ICV in females
Xie et al. (2012)²⁸	Brainstem	Bigger brainstem volume in males, no significant difference in brainstem volume/ICV
	Thalamus	Bigger thalamus in males, bigger thalamus volume/GM volume in females, rightward asymmetry more prominent in females
Sacher et al. (2013)²¹	Total brain	Bigger total brain volume in males after correction for body volume
Ardekani et al. (2013)¹⁹	Corpus callosum	Bigger CCA in females after correction for brain volume and age
Luders et al. (2014)²⁵	Corpus callosum	No significant associations to sex
Perlaki et al. (2014)²⁶	Hippocampus	No signification associations to sex after correction for brain volume
Tan et al. (2016)²⁷	Hippocampus	Bigger hippocampus volume in males

GM, gray matter; ICV, intracranial volume; WM, white matter; CCA, corpus callosum cross-sectional area.

Table 3.

Studies about the relationship between handedness and brain morphology

Authors	Brain region	Handedness related results
Habib et al. (1991)²⁹	Corpus callosum	Smaller in right-handers especially in its anterior half than in left-handers
Peterson et al. (1993)⁴²	Basal ganglia	Bigger total basal ganglia volume in left hemisphere than right in right-handers; bigge globus pallidus, putamen on the left, bigger caudate nuclei on the right
		No asymmetries in left-handers
Foundas et al. (1995)³⁹	Pars triangularis	Leftward asymmetry of pars triangularis and planum temporale in right-handers
	Planum temporale	No asymmetries in left-handers
Amunts et al. (2000)¹⁸	Central sulcus	Deeper central sulcus on left hemisphere than on right in male right-handers
Ifthikharuddin et al. (2000)⁴¹	Basal ganglia	Bigger caudate nucleus in right hemisphere than in left in both right-handers and lef handers
		Bigger putamen in right hemisphere than left in left-handers
Good et al. (2001)⁶	GM, WM	No significant associations to handedness
Büchel et al. (2004)⁴⁵	WM	Higher FA in WM underneath precentral gyrus in right hemisphere than in left in lef handers, while higher FA in left hemisphere in right-handers
Anstey et al. (2004)⁴⁰	Hippocampus	Bigger hippocampus in female left-handers than in female right-handers
	Amygdala	No significant associations to handedness in amygdala
Hervé et al. (2006)³⁸	Inferior frontal sulcus Precentral sulcus	Leftward asymmetry of inferior frontal sulcus and precentral sulcus in right-handers, an no asymmetry or rightward asymmetry in left-handers
	Planum temporale	Leftward asymmetry of planum temporale in right-handers while no asymmetry in lef handers
Mckay et al. (2017)⁴⁶	WM	Higher FA in anterior corpus callosum and frontal cortex in left-handers than in righ handers
Kavaklioglu et al. (2017)⁴⁴	Cerebellum	No significant associations to handedness
Ocklenburg et al. (2016)³¹	GM	No significant associations to handedness

GM, gray matter; WM, white matter; FA, fractional anisotropy.

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