Neuroimaging and the aging process in psychiatry

Abstract

Neuroimaging with functional and structural techniques has revealed decreases in cortical volume, increases in ventricular size and sulcal width as well as mild decreases in blood flow and glucose metabolic rate in normal aging. In schizophrenia, these changes may occur earlier than in controls and perhaps most prominently in the frontal lobes and striatum. In affective disorder, not entirely dissimilar changes occur although some studies show them to be less marked and have different regional distributions. In late onset depression, vascular changes in white matter detected with magnetic resonance imaging affect a distinct portion of patients. Imaging findings in Alzheimer's disease with late onset of temporal and parietal lobe changes appears distinct from the major psychoses.