Spatial covariance modeling analysis of hypertension on cognitive aging

Abstract

It's becoming increasingly clear that hypertension (HTN) is at the root of much cognitive decline previously attributed to aging. Long before patients in clinical stroke, HTN has caused a certain degree of damage on brain cognitive function. In this study, magnetic resonance images (MRI) of hypertensive and control group will be first collected, then processed by voxel based morphology (VBM), and further studied with spatial covariance modeling. Testing the effect of HTN on the expression of the age-related gray matter pattern revealed that hypertensive showed higher expression of age-related pattern than normotensives. HTN may have an accelerated effect on normal cognitive aging process. © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014.