Does the Shape of the Brain Depend on Gravity?

The estimation of cerebral atrophy in clinical routine is mostly a visual neuroradiological diagnosis depending on a subjective comparison of the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) space relative to the brain tissue and size of the ventricles. With neuroimaging brain atrophy appears to be accentuated in the frontal lobe regions. This holds true for normal ageing and even more so in most neurodegenerative processes. This finding might be overestimated because of a brain shift caused by position-dependent gravitational influences in the scanner. MRI-based quantitative morphometric techniques like the Brain Image Analysis (…