Anders M Fjell
Professor of psychology. Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition. University of Oslo. Interested in the brain from the start to the end. www.lcbc.uio.no
- Does memory fade slowly, or in drops and bursts? We analyzed 728k tests from 210k people. Key finding: “stability” isn’t a trait you either have or don’t have - it’s often a time-limited state at different points in aging. Preprint "Punctuated Memory Change": 👇 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
- The way your research has been embracing and exploiting large datasets is genuinely inspiring!
- Thanks a lot Simon!
- Why does this matter? If decline is "punctuated," treating aging as a smooth erosion misses the critical windows for intervention. We need to understand what triggers the transition from a stable plateau to a drop.
- This work suggests we need to look at aging as a complex system with critical transitions, not just gradual wear and tear.
- We harmonized data across 3 major cohorts (SHARE, HRS, Betula). We also looked at MRI data from ~2,000 people to see the brain basis of these changes. Stability is real for ~10% > 70 years over a decade, with less brain atrophy in the medial temporal lobe.
- However, the core finding was that the "Smooth Decline" is largely a statistical artifact of averaging. When we look at individuals, we see that memory aging is often "punctuated": extended plateaus of stability interrupted by abrupt, state-like transitions of loss.
- Very impressed with @didacvp.bsky.social's work in @natcomms.nature.com, the most thorough mapping of longitudinal memory-atrophy relationships in normal aging, showing both global and memory-specific associations, which grow stronger with age. Early accsess here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
- Thanks for the fun and interesting discussions @kathrynbates.bsky.social and Chloe Carrick
- Is sleep important for the brain? 🧠😴 we asked Professor @andersfjell.bsky.social and explored the different theories as to why we sleep, and why the golden 7 hours might not be for everyone: www.scienceorfiction.co.uk/p/is-sleep-i...
- It is this type of sky over the university. Morning office window view.
- @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...
- @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/...
- 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?
- 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...
- 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?
- @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...
- 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
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- Happy to see my first first-author paper in Imaging Neuroscience (along with @fmrib-karla.bsky.social and @nichols.bsky.social): Characterising ongoing brain aging and baseline effects from cross-sectional data doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...
- 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
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View full threadBrain 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...
- 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
- 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.
- 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 👇
- Join us in beautiful Oslo! Associate Professor @ocbe.bsky.social @uio.no Deadline May 18th www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
- 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...
- For those interested in my opinion, please see journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
- 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...
- 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...
- New paper: neural segregation in development & dedifferentiation in aging associate with memory. Within & between-network FC during encoding and retrieval, 2 samples, 7-82 years, n=734, using a multiverse approach. Lead by Håkon Grydeland 👏 @LCBC_UiO www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
- Enjoyable read in @brain1878.bsky.social by Tom Pollak against "inflammatory reductionism" in psychiatry, and in favour of ‘tolerance of ambiguity’ - the extent to which an individual can cope without certainty. academic.oup.com/brain/articl...
- 🚨 new publication from our lab in @pnas.org ! "Expert navigators deploy rational complexity–based decision precaching for large-scale real-world planning" Entropy of streets & successor representations explain planning speed Colab wth Daniel McNamee at Champalimaud www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
- Very cool - congrats on a great paper!
- Review: 85% of 27.5k participants rated sleep as important/ very important for brain health. But the evidence for a causal role of sleep is surprisingly weak relative to the amount of attention to sleep in science and society. @KWalhovd journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
- Preprint: Why is edu associated with better memory in aging? We used >400k memory tests & 15k brain MRIs: (1) Edu linearly related to memory, larger ICV & (slightly) larger vol in memory regions, (3) not less decline (mem+brain), (4) not enhanced tolerance to atrophy.🧵 medrxiv.org/cgi/content/...
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View full threadThe results go directly against the focus on cognitive reserve in the Lancet comission 2024-report on dementia. We only looked at data from Western countries, relationships may be different elsewhere. Still, analyses done across 33 countries and several cohorts -> not confined to one time or place.
- The results fit our recent finding from Norwegian conscription data (in men) that elevated risk for early dementia with low education can be explained by cognitive test scores at age 18 www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...
- The most parsimonious explanation is that the associations reflect factors present early in life, incl propensity of inds with certain traits to pursue more education. While education has numerous benefits, we don't find any indication that it provides protection against cognitive or brain decline.
- If you are in Norway: Hosting a seminar on changing cognition - over time and over the lifespan. Feb 13th at 17.00 downtown Oslo. @olerogeberg.bsky.social @arnovanhootegem.bsky.social @PabloFGarrido @UiO_Lifesci www.uio.no/om/aktuelt/u...
- Just reviewed for Mechanisms of Aging and Development, a respected journal w. IF>5, and found this in the acceptance letter: "This recommendation is primarily based on your esteemed standing in the academic community, rather than on the overall quality of the manuscript itself." What can you say?
- Just out: We find that change in AD-sensitive brain features correlates with genetic AD-risk and memory decline in healthy adults. Furthermore, most older adults show accelerated decline in AD regions, related to episodic memory decline. Lead by James Roe. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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- Not bad! From my favorite office this morning
- Christmas lunch at LCBC
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- Congrats Siri, that is truly great news!
- This looks pretty cool - a "next generation" histological atlas of the human brain applied to automated brain MRI. Will check out on own data for sure! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
