title: Small-worldness and modularity of the resting-state functional brain network decrease with aging.
abstract: The human brain is a complex network that is known to be affected by normal aging. Graph-based analysis has been used to estimate functional brain network efficiency and effects of normal aging on small-worldness have been reported. This relationship is further investigated here along with network modularity, a statistic reflecting how well a network is organized into modules of densely interconnected nodes. Modularity has previously been observed to vary as a function of working memory capacity, therefore we hypothesized that both small-worldness and modularity would show age-related declines. We found that both small-worldness and modularity were negatively correlated with increasing age but that this decline was relatively slow.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Shimane University, 89-1 Enyacho, Izumo, Shimane 693-8501, Japan. Electronic address: onodak1@med.shimane-u.ac.jp.
authors.forename: Keiichi
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Onoda
authors.forename: Shuhei
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yamaguchi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000502:physiology*; D012146:Rest
keywords: Aging; Functional network; Modularity; Resting-state; Small-worldness; fMRI