Anders M Fjell

@nature.com made a news piece on our new @pnas.org paper. Good job Anne Ravndal!
Men’s brains shrink faster than women’s: what that means for Alzheimer’s.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Sex differences in healthy brain aging are unlikely to explain higher Alzheimer’s disease prevalence in women | PNAS As Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is diagnosed more frequently in women, understanding the role of sex has become a key priority in AD research. However,...

Another interesting paper from LifeBrain consortium suggesting that sex differences in healthy brain aging are unlikely to explain higher prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease in women www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Takeaway: sex gaps in structural brain aging are modest and we must look beyond atrophy to explain women’s higher AD diagnosis rates. Other biomarkers? Or maybe non-biological causes?

Sex differences in healthy brain aging are unlikely to explain higher Alzheimer’s disease prevalence in women | PNAS As Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is diagnosed more frequently in women, understanding the role of sex has become a key priority in AD research. However,...

@pnas.org: Small sex differences in brain aging, steeper decline in men in some regions. Does not explain why more women are diagnosed with AD. 12,638 longitudinal MRIs, 4,726 participants across 14 cohorts. Control for head-size, education, life-expectancy. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Effects remained even when accounting for amyloid level. Reflect an immune response to accumulating, sub-threshold Aβ? Preexisting effects of higher cortical thickness in those that subsequently develop high Aβ? Protective factor?

Cortical thickness changes precede high levels of amyloid by at least seven years Alzheimer's disease (AD) is now defined based on its underlying brain pathology, with the presence of amyloid (Aβ) plaques at high enough levels sufficient to warrant a diagnosis in the absence of cog...

Using 4570 longitudinal MRIs + 1684 Aβ PET scans from cognitively healthy older adults @jamesmroe.bsky.social find cortical thickness changed ≥7 years before PET-detectable Aβ. Those who later developed high Aβ already had thicker cortex & less thinning.
@LCBC_uio www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Reevaluating the role of education on cognitive decline and brain aging in longitudinal cohorts across 33 Western countries - Nature Medicine In a large cross-national study, education was linked to better memory and larger brain volumes but not to slower cognitive or brain decline with age, suggesting that the association reflects early-li...

🧠 Education boosts memory levels but not brain aging resistance

A new study across 33 countries found more education links to better memory and larger brain volume, but not slower cognitive or brain decline.

🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#SciComm 🧪

Education does not affect memory decline or brain aging - Nature Medicine Competing explanations account for education’s link to better memory and brain structure in older age. By analyzing more than 400,000 memory scores and over 15,000 MRI scans, we found the association ...

@natmed.nature.com made a nice Research Briefing about our paper. Highglights with less details, the main conclusion is the same: Education does not affect memory decline or brain aging @LCBC_UiO @LifebrainEU www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🧠💡 CAN YOU SAVE YOUR FUTURE BRAIN BY GETTING A DEGREE? A new Nature Medicine paper—led by @andersfjell.bsky.social—analyzed 407,000 memory tests and 15,000 brain scans across 33 countries to find out whether education protect you from cognitive decline at older ages. The answer: not really. [1/5]

People with more education did better — but declined just as fast. The takeaway: To reduce dementia risk, we may need to shift from boosting adult cognitive reserve to investing in early education. #Lifecourse #BrainHealth #DementiaPrevention

The three #LancetCommission reports on #DementiaPrevention have shifted focus from early schooling to longer education as protection against dementia. Our new results suggest this shift may be misguided: early-life factors, not adult education, likely drive the effect.

Reevaluating the role of education on cognitive decline and brain aging in longitudinal cohorts across 33 Western countries Nature Medicine - In a large cross-national study, education was linked to better memory and larger brain volumes but not to slower cognitive or brain decline with age, suggesting that the...

New in @NatureMedicine Education is not linked to slower memory or brain decline in aging. We analyzed 400,000 memory tests and 15,000 MRIs from 33 countries. Associations likely shaped by childhood schooling and development. @LCBC_UiO @LifebrainEU rdcu.be/ex8iC

New paper by @njudd.com shows that an additional year of education doesn't causally affect telomere length in old age, despite many (theory) accounts arguing otherwise. It's been desk rejected by 13 journals happy to publish small 'positive' telomere studies. Sigh. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is a really interesting paper - showing what you can and cannot infer about individual differences in change from x-sect data. A take-home-message is that typical brain age models cannot be used to measure differences in brain aging - deviations reflect stable differences between people.

Finally, similar to the conclusion of @didacvp.bsky.social direct.mit.edu/imag/article... long follow-up time between scans yields much higher sensitivity to detect individual differences in change than many scans: 2 scans over 4 yr better than 12 scans over 1 yr

Characterising ongoing brain aging from cross-sectional data “Brain age delta” is the difference between age estimated from brain imaging data and actual age. Positive delta in adults is normally interpreted as implying that an individual is aging (or has aged)...

Brain age models trained on chronological age are almost deemed to pick up signal from regions where there are almost no differences in change - i.e. brain age gap says next-to-nothing about aging before 60 years. Fits perfectly with @fmrib-steve.bsky.social et al www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Some interesting implications: Very difficult to find systematic differences between people in change before 50. The big exception is the ventricles: Larger diffs in change from earlier in adulthood.

Preprint: before age 60, between-people diffs in brain vols almost exclusively reflect stable diffs, while systematic diffs in rate-of-change in aging cause up to 40% of the variation to be due to change at 80 years. @edvardg.bsky.social 🧵https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.26.655710v1

Healthy sleep durations appear to vary across cultures | PNAS Past research finds that sleep duration is reliably linked with health yet sleep durations differ substantially between countries. We investigated ...

Very nice in @pnas.org - people who slept closer to their own culture's norms for sleep duration had better overall health. Sleep duration is more complex than often considered in a strict neuroscientific or biomedical sense. @ChristineOuBC @stevenheine.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

This is a great centre (and a great city), very good opportunity 👇

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For those interested in my opinion, please see journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

The great brain clearance and dementia debate An established theory for how good sleep reduces a person’s risk of neurodegenerative disease has been called into question. The ensuing argument could have enormous consequences for the treatment of ...

A balanced discussion in @nature on the possible role of sleep for waste clearance, with both sides presenting their arguments. What is lacking is a stronger focus on how the evidence looks in humans - so far it is not particularly strong. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Reliability of structural brain change in cognitively healthy adult samples Abstract. In neuroimaging research, tracking individuals over time is key to understanding the interplay between brain changes and genetic, environmental, or cognitive factors across the lifespan. Yet...

Very interesting from @VidalDidac - MUCH higher reliability for structural neuroimaging measures with longer follow-up time rather than more follow-ups or higher n. 2.-year follow-up requires 4 times higher n than 6-year follow up. @LCBC_UiO direct.mit.edu/imag/article...

Did you know that different prenatal environment causes MZ twins' brains to deviate? But when exposed to cognitive intervention in adulthood, common genetics make their brains converge while DZ twin brains become more different. Fascinating! @LCBC_UiO www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Preprint from @didacvp.bsky.social - a common brain factor underlying memory decline in older age. Stronger associations in older, but independent of genetic Alzheimer risk. Very interesting work using >10.000 MRI scan. @LCBC_UiO www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Postdoctoral Fellow (276000) | University of Oslo Job title: Postdoctoral Fellow (276000), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Friday, April 25, 2025

Open Postdoctoral position! - ERC Advanced Grant project HOMME

www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/276000/postdoctoral-fellow

About the HOMME project www.sv.uio.no/psi/english/research/projects/homme

We find hippocampal correlates of superior episodic memory are the same across adulthood - we don't find evidence that special hippocampal features are important in aging across memory activity, macrostructure, microstructure and atrophy. rdcu.be/edvSC

This is the coolest preprint I have been a (small) part of: twins cybercycling in virtual reality to demonstrate how early and later environmental influences on the cortex can be distinguished and modified. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

This is the coolest preprint I have been a (small) part of: twins cybercycling in virtual reality to demonstrate how early and later environmental influences on the cortex can be distinguished and modified. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Really interesting from @maxwellelliott.bsky.social et al: 1-year brain changes reliably detected by cluster-scanning - burst of multiple, very short T1's. Great potential for tracking individual differences in brain change over clinically meaningful intervals. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...