Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Canada faces significant aging of its population as the proportion of seniors increases more rapidly than that of all other age groups. By 2026, one Canadian in five will be 65 years or older. Consequently, one of the most paramount social and economic issues facing the Canadian population is maintenance of intellectual and cognitive integrity in advanced age, factors that are critical to an autonomous standard of living in later years. Our success in identifying, treating, as well as preventing age-related cognitive, structural, and functional changes in the central nervous system greatly depends on our understanding of healthy aging. My project will use the most recent innovations in NeuroImaging to illustrate the neural processes that accompany cognitive changes in healthy aging. I will combine anatomical, functional and behavioural measures to reveal if and how the normally aging brain causes age-related reduction in cognitive capacity. I will validate our imaging predictions of cognitive aging in a large cross-sectional study of healthy adults spanning 18 to 90 years of age. All participants will undergo high-resolution structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans, to examine changes in grey matter, white matter, and functional connectivity, followed by a comprehensive neuropsychological examination. Studying neurocognitive aging will help us better characterize changes in the brain throughout the lifespan and identify preclinical markers for cognitive decline. With the population over 65 years of age rising rapidly, discoveries in this domain will likely have dramatic impact on public health and substantially reduce the burden on families as well as government and social programs.