Abstract
The lifespan growth of the functional connectome remains unknown. Here, we assemble task-free functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data from 33,250 individuals aged 32 postmenstrual weeks to 80 years from 132 global sites. We report critical inflection points in the nonlinear growth curves of the global mean and variance of the connectome, peaking in the late fourth and late third decades of life, respectively. After constructing a fine-grained, lifespan-wide suite of system-level brain atlases, we show distinct maturation timelines for functional segregation within different systems. Lifespan growth of regional connectivity is organized along a primary-to-association cortical axis. These connectome-based normative models reveal substantial individual heterogeneities in functional brain networks in patients with autism spectrum disorder, major depressive disorder, and Alzheimer’s disease. These findings elucidate the lifespan evolution of the functional connectome and can serve as a normative reference for quantifying individual variation in development, aging, and neuropsychiatric disorders.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
1. Updating samples and sites. 2. Updating disease-related analysis. 3. Updating normative modeling. 4. Conducting a series of sensitivity analyses to validate our main results.
Data availability
The MRI dataset listed in Supplementary Table 1 are partly available at the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (https://nda.nih.gov/), the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange Initiative (https://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/abide/), the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (https://adni.loni.usc.edu/), the Age_ility Project (https://www.nitrc.org/projects/age-ility), the Baby Connectome Project (https://nda.nih.gov/), the Brain Genomics Superstruct Project (https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/25833), the Calgary Preschool MRI Dataset (https://osf.io/axz5r/), the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience Dataset (https://www.cam-can.org/index.php?content=dataset), the Developing Human Connectome Project (http://www.developingconnectome.org/data-release/second-data-release/), the Human Connectome Project (https://www.humanconnectome.org), the Lifespan Human Connectome Project (https://nda.nih.gov/), the Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland Sample Dataset (https://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/pro/nki.html), the Neuroscience in Psychiatry Network Dataset (https://nspn.org.uk/), the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition, and Genetics (PING) Data Repository (http://pingstudy.ucsd.edu/), the Pixar Dataset (https://openfmri.org/dataset/ds000228/), the Strategic Research Program for Brain Sciences (SRPBS) MRI Dataset (https://bicr-resource.atr.jp/srpbsopen/), the Southwest University Adult Lifespan Dataset (http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/retro/sald.html), the Southwest University Longitudinal Imaging Multimodal Brain Data Repository (http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/retro/southwestuni_qiu_index.html), and the UK Biobank Brain Imaging Dataset (https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/). The dhcpSym surface atlases in aged from 32 to 44 postmenstrual weeks is available at https://brain-development.org/brain-atlases/atlases-from-the-dhcp-project/cortical-surface-template/. The UNC 4D infant cortical surface atlases are available at https://bbm.web.unc.edu/tools/. The fs_LR_32k surface atlas is available at https://balsa.wustl.edu/. The subcortical atlases are available at https://github.com/yetianmed/subcortex. The brain charts and lifespan developmental atlases are shared online via GitHub (https://github.com/sunlianglong/BrainChart-FC-Lifespan).