López Pérez David, Bokde Arun L W, Kerskens Christian M
Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
Institute of Neuroscience, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Eur Phys J Spec Top. 2023;232(1):123-133. doi: 10.1140/epjs/s11734-022-00696-2. Epub 2022 Oct 21.
Getting older affects both the structure of the brain and some cognitive capabilities. Until now, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) approaches have been unable to give a coherent reflection of the cognitive declines. It shows the limitation of the contrast mechanisms used in most MRI investigations, which are indirect measures of brain activities depending on multiple physiological and cognitive variables. However, MRI signals may contain information of brain activity beyond these commonly used signals caused by the neurovascular response. Here, we apply a zero-spin echo (ZSE) weighted MRI sequence, which can detect heartbeat-evoked signals (HES). Remarkably, these MRI signals have properties only known from electrophysiology. We investigated the complexity of the HES arising from this sequence in two age groups; young (18-29 years) and old (over 65 years). While comparing young and old participants, we show that the complexity of the HES decreases with age, where the stability and chaoticity of these HES are particularly sensitive to age. However, we also found individual differences which were independent of age. Complexity measures were related to scores from different cognitive batteries and showed that higher complexity may be related to better cognitive performance. These findings underpin the affinity of the HES to electrophysiological signals. The profound sensitivity of these changes in complexity shows the potential of HES for understanding brain dynamics that need to be tested in more extensive and diverse populations with clinical relevance for all neurovascular diseases.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1140/epjs/s11734-022-00696-2.
衰老会影响大脑结构和一些认知能力。到目前为止，磁共振成像（MRI）方法一直无法连贯地反映认知能力下降情况。这显示了大多数MRI研究中使用的对比机制的局限性，这些机制是依赖于多种生理和认知变量的大脑活动的间接测量方法。然而，MRI信号可能包含除了由神经血管反应引起的这些常用信号之外的大脑活动信息。在这里，我们应用了一种零自旋回波（ZSE）加权MRI序列，它可以检测心跳诱发信号（HES）。值得注意的是，这些MRI信号具有仅从电生理学中得知的特性。我们在两个年龄组中研究了由该序列产生的HES的复杂性；年轻组（18 - 29岁）和老年组（65岁以上）。在比较年轻和老年参与者时，我们发现HES的复杂性随年龄降低，其中这些HES的稳定性和混沌性对年龄特别敏感。然而，我们也发现了与年龄无关的个体差异。复杂性测量与来自不同认知测试组的分数相关，并且表明更高的复杂性可能与更好的认知表现相关。这些发现支持了HES与电生理信号的相似性。这些复杂性变化的深度敏感性显示了HES在理解大脑动力学方面的潜力，这需要在更广泛和多样的具有所有神经血管疾病临床相关性的人群中进行测试。
在线版本包含可在10.1140/epjs/s11734 - 022 - 00696 - 2获取的补充材料。
