Professor Svenja Caspers | Interindividual variability of brain phenotypes – towards population neuroimaging

The human brain as well as the respective cognitive abilities show a pronounced interindividual variability which are considerably evident during the aging process and thus in the older adult brain. Influences beyond the factor ‘age’ itself need to be considered when trying to understand this variability in brain structure, function and connectivity. These include genetic as well as lifestyle and environmental factors and their complex interplay. Since the effect of each single factor might be small, large population-based cohorts are needed to capture these individual influences. The talk will show some examples from a large cohort of older subjects of the Research Centre Jülich, the 1000BRAINS study, as well as the German National Cohort (NAKO). Examples will demonstrate the relevance and interplay of different influencing factors on brain structure, function and connectivity and will discuss the effects of data pooling as compared to large homogeneous studies.