RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Age differences in the functional architecture of the human brain
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2021.03.31.437922
DO 10.1101/2021.03.31.437922
A1 Roni Setton
A1 Laetitia Mwilambwe-Tshilobo
A1 Manesh Girn
A1 Amber W. Lockrow
A1 Giulia Baracchini
A1 Colleen Hughes
A1 Alexander J. Lowe
A1 Benjamin N. Cassidy
A1 Jian Li
A1 Wen-Ming Luh
A1 Danilo Bzdok
A1 Richard M. Leahy
A1 Tian Ge
A1 Daniel S. Margulies
A1 Bratislav Misic
A1 Boris C. Bernhardt
A1 W. Dale Stevens
A1 Felipe De Brigard
A1 Prantik Kundu
A1 Gary R. Turner
A1 R. Nathan Spreng
YR 2022
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/01/05/2021.03.31.437922.abstract
AB The intrinsic functional organization of the brain changes into older adulthood. Age differences are observed at multiple spatial scales, from global reductions in modularity and segregation of distributed brain systems, to network-specific patterns of dedifferentiation. Whether dedifferentiation reflects an inevitable, global shift in brain function with age, circumscribed, experience dependent changes, or both, is uncertain. We employed a multi-method strategy to interrogate dedifferentiation at multiple spatial scales. Multi-echo (ME) resting-state fMRI was collected in younger (n=181) and older (n=120) healthy adults. Cortical parcellation sensitive to individual variation was implemented for precision functional mapping of each participant, while preserving group-level parcel and network labels. ME-fMRI processing and gradient mapping identified global and macroscale network differences. Multivariate functional connectivity methods tested for microscale, edge-level differences. Older adults had lower BOLD signal dimensionality, consistent with global network dedifferentiation. Gradients were largely age-invariant. Edge-level analyses revealed discrete, network-specific dedifferentiation patterns in older adults. Visual and somatosensory regions were more integrated within the functional connectome; default and frontoparietal control network regions showed greater connectivity; and the dorsal attention network was more integrated with heteromodal regions. These findings highlight the importance of multi-scale, multi-method approaches to characterize the architecture of functional brain aging.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.