Age and Gender Variations in T1 Measurements of White and Grey Matter Structures Within the Human Brain at 7 T

Peter Jonathan Wright^1,2, Olivier Mougin¹, Susan Pritchard¹, Eleanor Cox¹, Penny Gowland¹

With the increasing life expectancy of humans in the developed world and neurological diseases such as Parkinsons becoming ever more prominent, a growing interest has emerged examining normal changes in brain tissue in later life. 30 healthy subjects between 40-80 years were scanned at 7 T using an MPRAGE sequence to measure T₁ recovery values in ROI of the brain. Significant age variations were observed between grey matter, anterior and posterior white matter (p = 0.02) dominated by male subjects and splenium and genu of the corpus callosum (p < 0.02), dominated by female subjects.