Demyelination is recognized as a major process in both normal aging and neurodegenerative diseases. Using the Human Connectome Project Aging dataset, we investigated intracortical demyelination in normal aging using T1w/T2w maps. To capture the fine changes across cortical layers, we employed a surface-based approach in contrast to the commonly used volumetric approach by constructing a cortical myelin profile for each region, which was then quantified using a nonlinearity index. We showed that the nonlinearity of cortical myelin profile exhibits a steeper decline with aging than cortical thickness and therefore presents the potential of a unique marker of age-related microstructural changes.
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