Authors:

Joseph Moore

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About Paper:

Brain age has emerged as an important biomarker for assessing the effects of PTSD on brain structure. Previous studies have shown that PTSD is associated with reduced brain volume, suggesting accelerated brain aging. This study used brainageR, a regression-based approach in R, to estimate brain- predicted age from neuroimaging data and calculate predicted age difference (PAD) as the difference between brain-predicted age and chronological age. A positive PAD indicates that the brain appears older than the person's actual age. Neuroimaging data were acquired using a 7T Siemens scanner from three groups: PTSD, trauma-exposed without PTSD, and non-traumatized controls. Statistical analyses were conducted in R, using ANOVA to compare PAD across groups while controlling for sex. The results showed no significant differences in PAD among the groups (F(2,76) = 0.278, p = 0.758) or between sexes (F(1,76) = 0.084, p = 0.772). Tukey post-hoc tests further confirmed no significant pairwise differences. These findings suggest that PTSD may not be associated with significant differences in brain-predicted aging, though the lack of significance could be due to limited statistical power or sample size constraints. Future research should explore region-specific volumetric changes related to PTSD to capture potential brain aging effects better.

Source:

Auburn University / Samuel Ginn College of Engineering / 2025

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Co-authors:

Joseph Moore