Some brain differences after injury were smaller at older ages
A cross-sectional comparison of 123 adults with longstanding brain injuries and 74 controls found smaller differences in two brain structures at older ages.
Limit: Individual brain changes over time were not measured
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
In a cross-sectional observational study, researchers compared 123 adults with chronic moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury and 74 controls without brain injury, aged 40 to 90. The injured participants had received compensated inpatient rehabilitation in Australia and were 6–33 years past injury. The groups were matched by age and gender.
Brain scans linked both older age and injury to structural reductions across multiple brain regions. Injury-related differences were smaller at older ages in two structures. The injury group had lower structural integrity in the fornix, a nerve-fiber bundle, in their 40s through 70s, and a smaller left thalamus, a brain relay center, in their 40s through 60s. These differences diminished in older groups. Cognitive tests linked these structural reductions to poorer performance within the injury group, especially memory for words and the speed of processing information.
Why it matters
For adults who received inpatient rehabilitation, the authors suggest moderate-to-severe brain injury may leave initial structural changes without accelerating long-term age-related decline.
Caveats
The cross-sectional design compared different people at different ages, so it could not establish how individuals’ brains changed over time. The injured sample was limited to people who received compensated inpatient rehabilitation in Australia after moderate-to-severe injury.
The paper
The Relationship Between Age, Brain Structure, and Cognition in Chronic Traumatic Brain Injury
Monash University
Neurorehabilitation and Neural Repair, May 15, 2026, Open access
