Age-related changes of whole-brain dynamics in spontaneous neuronal coactivations

Abstract

Human brains experience whole-brain anatomic and functional changes throughout the lifespan. Age-related whole-brain network changes have been studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine their low-frequency spatial and temporal characteristics. However, little is known about age-related changes in whole-brain fast dynamics at the scale of neuronal events. The present study investigated age-related whole-brain dynamics in resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) signals from 73 healthy participants from 6 to 65 years old via characterizing transient neuronal coactivations at a resolution of tens of milliseconds. These uncovered transient patterns suggest fluctuating brain states at different energy levels of global activations. Our results indicate that with increasing age, shorter lifetimes and more occurrences were observed in the brain states that show the global high activations and more consecutive visits to the global highest-activation brain state. There were also reduced transitional steps during consecutive visits to the global lowest-activation brain state. These age-related effects suggest reduced stability and increased fluctuations when visiting high-energy brain states and with a bias toward staying low-energy brain states. These age-related whole-brain dynamics changes are further supported by changes observed in classic alpha and beta power, suggesting its promising applications in examining the effect of normal healthy brain aging, brain development, and brain disease.

Total neuroelectric brain activity derived from resting-state MEG is invariable across the adult lifespan

“…Age-related changes in brain activity are widely studied in modern neuroscience. Changes in cortical activity are considered (Rajah and D'Esposito 2005;Scally et al 2018;Cespón et al 2022) and also deeper compartments of the brain are investigated (Hinault, Baillet, and Courtney 2023;Shou et al 2022;Mather and Nga 2013). Magnetic encephalography together with magnetic resonance imaging makes it possible to localize electrical sources with millimeter precision on a millisecond time scale (Hämäläinen et al 1993;Llinás et al 1999;Gómez et al 2013;Baillet 2017).…”