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Selective Atrophy of Left Hemisphere and Frontal Lobe of the Brain in Old Men

¹ Department of Biomedical Engineering, Lerner Research Institute
² Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio.
³ Program of Applied Biomedical Engineering, Fenn College of Engineering, Cleveland State University, Ohio.
Departments of ⁴ Physics
⁵ Statistics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.

Address correspondence to Guang H. Yue, PhD, Department of Biomedical Engineering/ND20, The Lerner Research Institute, The Cleveland Clinic Foundation, 9500 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44195. E-mail: yueg{at}ccf.org

In this study, volumes of the whole brain, hemispheres, and frontal lobes of young and elderly adults were quantified by an automated method. Effects of age, sex, and side on absolute and relative volumes of the brain structures were evaluated. Compared with the young group, elderly participants showed a 15% volume loss in the whole brain and hemispheres, and a 22% volume loss in the frontal lobes. The relative volume of the left hemisphere in the elderly group decreased more than that of the right hemisphere. Elderly men showed significantly greater left hemisphere and left frontal lobe volume losses than did elderly women, indicating that the larger left hemisphere relative volume reduction is largely contributed to by selective atrophy of the left frontal lobe volume in elderly men. These results may reflect age- and sex-related functional deterioration in the left brain.