Resting‐State EEG Microstates Parallel Age‐Related Differences in Allocentric Spatial Working Memory Performance

Abstract

Alterations of resting-state EEG microstates have been associated with various neurological disorders and behavioral states. Interestingly, age-related differences in EEG microstate organization have also been reported, and it has been suggested that resting-state EEG activity may predict cognitive capacities in healthy individuals across the lifespan. In this exploratory study, we performed a microstate analysis of resting-state brain activity and tested allocentric spatial working memory performance in healthy adult individuals: twenty 25–30-year-olds and twenty-five 64–75-year-olds. We found a lower spatial working memory performance in older adults, as well as age-related differences in the five EEG microstate maps A, B, C, C′ and D, but especially in microstate maps C and C′. These two maps have been linked to neuronal activity in the frontal and parietal brain regions which are associated with working memory and attention, cognitive functions that have been shown to be sensitive to aging. Older adults exhibited lower global explained variance and occurrence of maps C and C′. Moreover, although there was a higher probability to transition from any map towards maps C, C′ and D in young and older adults, this probability was lower in older adults. Finally, although age-related differences in resting-state EEG microstates paralleled differences in allocentric spatial working memory performance, we found no evidence that any individual or combination of resting-state EEG microstate parameter(s) could reliably predict individual spatial working memory performance. Whether the temporal dynamics of EEG microstates may be used to assess healthy cognitive aging from resting-state brain activity requires further investigation.

Relationship between Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Brain at Rest and Self-Reported Spontaneous Thoughts: An EEG Microstate Approach

“…Four microstate topographies with right frontal to left posterior, left frontal to right posterior, frontal to occipital and fronto-central configurations matched the most frequently reported microstate classes in the literature and were labeled as microstates A, B, C and D, respectively [44]. Among three additional topographies, one had left lateralized activity and was similar to microstate E reported in studies by [21,22,45] and was labeled accordingly as microstate E. One topography displayed posterior activity and matched microstate F reported in studies by [21,22,46], microstate E reported in studies by [47][48][49] and microstate C reported in study [50] and was further labeled as microstate F. The remaining topography had right lateralized activity and was similar to microstate G from study by [22] and microstate F reported in studies by [45,49]; this was further labeled as microstate G (Figure 1C). The extracted seven microstates explained 83.8% of the global variance.…”

EEG microstates in resting condition in young indians

“…However, the study shows Map C, which is not reflected in our study. [24] Thus, simultaneous visual and autonomic processing with attentional relocation and salience network could be the resting networks activated in these microstates.…”

A model for EEG Topography

“…Also, they represent the basic building blocks of the chain of spontaneous conscious mental processes, and that their occurrence and temporal dynamics determine the quality of mentation [3]. In addition, these EEG microstates could be age-dependent, and may predict cognitive capacities in healthy individuals across the lifespan [4]. These states could have different applications so.…”

“…Figure2. Topographic EEG images for different brain waves during dream[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] …”