查看文章

To test the hypothesis that higher neuronal density in brainstem aminergic nuclei contributes to neural reserve.

Participants are 165 individuals from the Rush Memory and Aging Project, a longitudinal clinical–pathologic cohort study. They completed a mean of 5.8 years of annual evaluations that included a battery of 19 cognitive tests from which a previously established composite measure of global cognition was derived. Upon death, they had a brain autopsy and uniform neuropathologic examination that provided estimates of the density of aminergic neurons in the locus ceruleus, dorsal raphe nucleus, substantia nigra, and ventral tegmental area plus summary measures of neuronal neurofibrillary tangles and Lewy bodies from these nuclei and medial temporal lobe and neocortex.

Neuronal densities in each nucleus were approximately normally distributed. In separate analyses, higher …