Data-driven investigation of structure-function association in healthy aging brain
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2020-08-27
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en
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Abstract
The age-related functional reorganization is a long-standing theory in the aging
literature due to the evidence showing hyperactivity in multiple brain regions in older adults.
However, the underlying neural mechanism is still far from clear. By integrating structural
information into the analysis, the structure-function interaction can be particularly interesting
to look at since previous studies suggested unique information embedded in the structurefunction
coupling that is more sensitive to age-related alteration than structural or functional
information alone. Thus, current study aims to characterize the aging brain by examining the
structure-function association. Specifically, we used a multiple linear regression model to
quantify the region-wise coupling strength between functional connectivity (FC) and
structural connectivity (SC). Multiple complex network measures were also computed and
included in the model to account for the potential indirect structural supporting on FC. By
fitting the model to the large-scale(428 participants) multimodal aging dataset from the Cam-
CAN project, we observed regional variability in SC-FC coupling strength that is related to
the functional specialization across cortices, with regions specialized in transmodal
information processing being more SC-FC uncoupled than unimodal regions. Moreover, our
results demonstrated several clusters of brain regions showing prominent age-related SC-FC
uncoupling, suggesting a gradual divergence between brain structure and function with
advancing age. Further investigation on the underlying interplay between SC and FC pointed
to several networks and brain regions as the potential source of age-related SC-FC
uncoupling, including the visual network, salience network and prefrontal regions. Together,
these findings help elucidate the interaction between SC and FC in the aging brain. Moreover,
our results also proposed several brain regions and networks that might be particularly
involved in age-related functional reorganization.
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Faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen