Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering, University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA.
Institute for Biomedical Engineering, Science, and Technology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA.
Sci Rep. 2022 Jul 15;12(1):12140. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-16125-2.
Human brains experience whole-brain anatomic and functional changes throughout the lifespan. Age-related whole-brain network changes have been studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to determine their low-frequency spatial and temporal characteristics. However, little is known about age-related changes in whole-brain fast dynamics at the scale of neuronal events. The present study investigated age-related whole-brain dynamics in resting-state electroencephalography (EEG) signals from 73 healthy participants from 6 to 65 years old via characterizing transient neuronal coactivations at a resolution of tens of milliseconds. These uncovered transient patterns suggest fluctuating brain states at different energy levels of global activations. Our results indicate that with increasing age, shorter lifetimes and more occurrences were observed in the brain states that show the global high activations and more consecutive visits to the global highest-activation brain state. There were also reduced transitional steps during consecutive visits to the global lowest-activation brain state. These age-related effects suggest reduced stability and increased fluctuations when visiting high-energy brain states and with a bias toward staying low-energy brain states. These age-related whole-brain dynamics changes are further supported by changes observed in classic alpha and beta power, suggesting its promising applications in examining the effect of normal healthy brain aging, brain development, and brain disease.
人类大脑在整个生命周期中经历全脑解剖和功能变化。已经使用功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 研究了与年龄相关的全脑网络变化，以确定其低频空间和时间特征。然而，对于神经元事件规模上的全脑快速动力学与年龄相关的变化，人们知之甚少。本研究通过在数十毫秒的分辨率下对静息状态脑电图 (EEG) 信号中的瞬时神经元共激活进行特征化，研究了来自 73 名年龄在 6 至 65 岁之间的健康参与者的与年龄相关的全脑动力学。这些发现的瞬态模式表明，在全局激活的不同能量水平下存在波动的大脑状态。我们的研究结果表明，随着年龄的增长，在表现出全局高激活和更多连续访问全局最高激活脑状态的脑状态中，观察到更短的寿命和更多的出现。在连续访问全局最低激活脑状态时，过渡步骤也减少了。这些与年龄相关的影响表明，在访问高能脑状态时稳定性降低，波动增加，并且偏向于保持低能脑状态。在经典的 alpha 和 beta 功率中观察到的变化进一步支持了这些与年龄相关的全脑动力学变化，这表明它在检查正常健康大脑老化、大脑发育和大脑疾病的影响方面具有广阔的应用前景。
