Journal
CEREBRAL CORTEX
Volume 31, Issue 11, Pages 5239-5252Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS INC
DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhab154
Keywords
aging; brain signal variability; cortex; episodic memory; fluid intelligence; longitudinal; MRI; perceptual speed; resting-state; striatum; thalamus
Categories
Funding
- Emmy Noether Programme grant from the German Research Foundation
- International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) LIFE and IMPRS COMP2PSYCH PhD programs
- Intramural Innovation Fund of the Max Planck Society
- Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Aging Research
- National Institutes of Health, United States of America [R01/R37 AG011230]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Studies have shown that reduced variability in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals is associated with advanced age and decline in cognitive performance. Longitudinal evidence over an average period of 2.5 years indicates a link between individual differences in BOLD variability, age, and performance across multiple cognitive domains.
Reduced moment-to-moment blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal variability has been consistently linked to advanced age and poorer cognitive performance, showing potential as a functional marker of brain aging. To date, however, this promise has rested exclusively on cross-sectional comparisons. In a sample of 74 healthy adults, we provide the first longitudinal evidence linking individual differences in BOLD variability, age, and performance across multiple cognitive domains over an average period of 2.5 years. As expected, those expressing greater loss of BOLD variability also exhibited greater decline in cognition. The fronto-striato-thalamic system emerged as a core neural substrate for these change-change associations. Preservation of signal variability within regions of the fronto-striato-thalamic system also cohered with preservation of functional integration across regions of this system, suggesting that longitudinal maintenance of local dynamics may require across-region communication. We therefore propose this neural system as a primary target in future longitudinal studies on the neural substrates of cognitive aging. Given that longitudinal change-change associations between brain and cognition are notoriously difficult to detect, the presence of such an association within a relatively short follow-up period bolsters the promise of brain signal variability as a viable, experimentally sensitive probe for studying individual differences in human cognitive aging.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available