Regional age-related effects in the monkey brain measured with 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopy

The rhesus monkey is a useful model for examining age-related effects on the brain, because of the extensive neuroanatomical homology between the monkey and the human brain, the tight control for neurological diseases as well as the possibility of obtaining relevant behavioral data and post-mortem tissue for histological analyses. Here, proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy ((1)H-MRS) was used together with high-resolution anatomical MRI images to carefully assess regional concentrations of brain metabolites in a group of 20 rhesus monkeys. In an anterior volume of interest (VOI) that covered frontal and prefrontal areas, significant positive correlations of myo-inositol and of total creatine concentrations with age were detected, whereas N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) and choline compounds (Cho) were not significantly correlated with age. In an occipito-parietal VOI, all metabolites showed no statistically significant age-dependent trend. Strong correlations were found between NAA concentration and gray matter fraction in the VOIs as well as between choline compounds and white matter fraction.