Aging faster: worry and rumination in late life are associated with greater brain age

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Aging faster: worry and rumination in late life are associated with greater brain age

Author links open overlay panelHelmet T.Karim¹MariaLy²GaryYu³RobertKrafty⁴Dana L.Tudorascu¹⁴Howard J.Aizenstein¹³CarmenAndreescu¹

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2021.01.009Get rights and content

Highlights

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Brain age is a machine learning derived marker of accelerated aging.

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Greater brain age associated with more worry and rumination, and less suppression.

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Women had lower brain age compared to men, replicating past studies on brain age.

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Past work showed that negative repetitive thoughts are related to greater AD risk.

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There is need for developing interventions targeting repetitive negative thoughts.

Abstract

Older adults with anxiety have lower gray matter brain volume – a component of accelerated aging. We have previously validated a machine learning model to predict brain age, an estimate of an individual’s age based on voxel-wise gray matter images. We investigated associations between brain age and anxiety, depression, stress, and emotion regulation. We recruited 78 participants (≥50yrs) along a wide range of worry severity. We collected imaging data and computed voxel-wise gray matter images, which was input into an existing machine learning model to estimate brain age. We conducted a multivariable linear regression between brain age and age, sex, race, education, worry, anxiety, depression, rumination, neuroticism, stress, reappraisal, and suppression. We found that greater brain age was significantly associated with greater age, male sex, greater worry, greater rumination, and lower suppression. Male sex, worry and rumination are associated with accelerated aging in late life and expressive suppression may have a protective effect. These results provide evidence for the transdiagnostic model of negative repetitive thoughts, which are associated with cognitive decline, amyloid, and tau.