Intracranial atherosclerosis is associated with lower volume in the posterior body and tail of the hippocampus.

Motivation: Intracranial atherosclerosis is a common and deleterious age-related neuropathology, however, its association with brain morphometry has not been investigated. Goal(s): To investigate brain morphometric anomalies associated with intracranial atherosclerosis in a large number of community-based older adults. Approach: Ex-vivo brain MRI and detailed neuropathologic examination were combined on 891 community-based older adults. Deformation-based morphometry (DBM) was used to investigate the association of intracranial atherosclerosis with brain morphometric characteristics voxel-wise. Results: Intracranial atherosclerosis was associated with lower volume in the posterior body and tail of the hippocampus in linear regression models controlling for all other neuropathologies. Impact: Intracranial atherosclerosis is the third age-related neuropathology after Alzheimer’s and limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy (LATE) that is shown to be independently associated with lower volume of the hippocampus.