Brain intrinsic magnetic susceptibility mapping depicts whole-brain functional connectivity balance of normal aging in lifespan

We hypothesized that brain normal aging maintains a balanced whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) in lifetime: some connections decline while other connections increase or retain, in a summation balance as a result of the cancellation of positive and negative connections. We validated this hypothesis through the use of the brain intrinsic magnetic susceptibility source (denoted by chi) as reconstructed from fMRI phase data. In implementation, we first acquired brain fMRI magnitude (m) and phase (p) data from a cohort of 245 healthy subjects in an age span of 20-60 years, then sought MRI-free brain chi source data by computationally solving an inverse mapping problem, thereby obtained triple datasets {chi, m, p} as brain images in different measurements. We performed GIG-ICA for brain function decomposition and constructed the FC matrices (chi FC, mFC, pFC} (in size of 50 x 50 for a selection of 50 ICA nodes), followed by a comparative analysis on brain FC agings using {chi, m, p} data. In the results, we found that: (i) chi FC aging upholds a FC balance in life span, in an intermediator between mFC and pFC agings by: mean(pFC) = -0.011 < mean(chi FC) = 0.015 < mean(mFC) = 0.036; and (ii) the chi FC aging exhibits a slight decline with a slightly downward fitting line in intermediation between the two slightly upward fitting lines for the mFC and pFC agings. On the rationale of the chi-depicted MRI-free brain functional state, the brain chi FC aging is closer to the brain FC aging truth than the MRI-borne mFC and pFC agings.

Automated summary

We hypothesized that brain normal aging consists of a balanced whole-brain functional connectivity, where some connections decline while others increase or retain, resulting in a summation balance. We validated this hypothesis by using brain intrinsic magnetic susceptibility source reconstructed from fMRI phase data. Our results showed that the chi FC aging upholds a FC balance in life span and is closer to the brain FC aging truth compared to the MRI-borne mFC and pFC agings.