Schedule of Events | Symposia

Regional Brain Age Patterns Predict Aphasia Outcomes

Poster Session E - Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom
Also presenting in Data Blitz Session 1 - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 10:30 am – 12:00 pm EDT, Grand Ballroom.

Ansley Martin¹ (ansleymm@email.sc.edu), Leonardo Bonilha², Chris Rorden¹, Julius Fridriksson¹, Nicholas Riccardi¹; ¹University of South Carolina - Columbia, ²University of South Carolina School of Medicine

Background: Language is a cornerstone of cognition, aiding communication and complex thought. Aphasia is a language impairment commonly caused by stroke, severely affecting quality of life. Emerging evidence suggests that health of surviving brain tissue is important for post-stroke language-related outcomes. Brain age is a novel in vivo neuroimaging biomarker of brain health, but its potential for understanding clinical outcomes in aphasia is largely unexplored. Methods: T1-weighted MR images were analyzed with VolBrain’s BrainStructureAges to estimate brain ages for 66 regions. Regional brain age gaps (regiBAG) were calculated as the difference between estimated and chronological ages. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the regiBAG correlation matrices from the unlesioned right hemisphere. The 4 identified regiBAG factors, reflecting various brain-aging patterns, were used in a stepwise linear regression model to predict Western Aphasia Battery (WAB) and Philidelphia Naming Task (PNT) scores at baseline and 6-months. Neuroimaging and behavioral data were available for 188 people. All stepwise models included lesion volume, days post-stroke, sex, and age. Results: A model including lesion volume, age, and Factors 1 & 3 significantly predicted WAB scores (F(4,183)=35.24, p<.001, adj. R2=.423). Baseline PNT was significantly predicted by lesion volume, age, and Factors 1 & 3 (F(4,139)=14.924, p<.001, adj. R2=.280) and 6-month PNT by days post-stroke and Factor 4 (F(2,123)=6.761, p=.002, adj. R2=.084). Conclusion: Regional brain age patterns are easily attainable and effectively aid in the prediction of aphasia outcomes, making it a promising tool for evaluation of post-stroke brain health.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Other