title: Intrinsic brain connectivity related to age in young and middle aged adults.
abstract: Age-related variations in resting state connectivity of the human brain were examined from young adulthood through middle age. A voxel-based network measure, degree, was used to assess age-related differences in tissue connectivity throughout the brain. Increases in connectivity with age were found in paralimbic cortical and subcortical regions. Decreases in connectivity were found in cortical regions, including visual areas and the default mode network. These findings differ from those of recent developmental studies examining earlier growth trajectories, and are consistent with known changes in cognitive function and emotional processing during mature aging. The results support and extend previous findings that relied on a priori definitions of regions of interest for their analyses. This approach of applying a voxel-based measure to examine the functional connectivity of individual tissue elements over time, without the need for a priori region of interest definitions, provides an important new tool in brain science.
authors.affiliation: Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America. michelle.hampson@yale.edu
authors.forename: Michelle
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Hampson
authors.forename: Fuyuze
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Tokoglu
authors.forename: Xilin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Dustin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Scheinost
authors.forename: Xenophon
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Papademetris
authors.forename: R Todd
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Constable
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D017677:Age Distribution; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000502:physiology; D006257:Head; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009038:Motion; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000502:physiology*; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult