Zhan Ke, Zheng Yi, Yang Yaqian, Zhen Yi, Tang Shaoting, Zheng Zhiming
School of Mathematical Sciences, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2022 Apr 18;14:830529. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2022.830529. eCollection 2022.
Brain health is an important research direction of neuroscience. In addition to the effects of diseases, we cannot ignore the negative effect of aging on brain health. There have been many studies on brain aging, but only a few have used dynamic models to analyze differences in micro brain characteristics in healthy people. In this article, we use the relaxed mean-field model (rMFM) to study the effects of normal aging. Two main parameters of this model are the recurrent connection strength and subcortical input strength. The sensitivity of the rMFM to the initial values of the parameters has not been fully discussed in previous research. We examine this issue through repeated numerical experiments and obtain a reasonable initial parameter range for this model. Differences in recurrent connection strength and subcortical input strength due to aging have also not been studied previously. We use statistical methods to find the regions of interest (ROIs) exhibiting significant differences between young and old groups. Further, we carry out a difference analysis on the process of change of these ROIs on a more detailed timescale. We find that even with the same final results, the trends of change in these ROIs are different. This shows that to develop possible methods to prevent or delay brain damage due to aging, more attention needs to be paid to the trends of change of different ROIs, not just the final results.
脑健康是神经科学的一个重要研究方向。除了疾病的影响外，我们不能忽视衰老对脑健康的负面影响。关于脑衰老已经有很多研究，但只有少数研究使用动态模型来分析健康人群脑微观特征的差异。在本文中，我们使用松弛平均场模型（rMFM）来研究正常衰老的影响。该模型的两个主要参数是递归连接强度和皮层下输入强度。在先前的研究中，尚未充分讨论rMFM对参数初始值的敏感性。我们通过反复的数值实验来研究这个问题，并为该模型获得了一个合理的初始参数范围。由于衰老导致的递归连接强度和皮层下输入强度的差异此前也未被研究过。我们使用统计方法来找出在年轻组和老年组之间表现出显著差异的感兴趣区域（ROI）。此外，我们在更详细的时间尺度上对这些ROI的变化过程进行差异分析。我们发现，即使最终结果相同，这些ROI的变化趋势也是不同的。这表明，要开发预防或延缓衰老所致脑损伤的可能方法，需要更多地关注不同ROI的变化趋势，而不仅仅是最终结果。
