Ranasinghe Kamalini G, Kudo Kiwamu, Casaletto Kaitlin, Rojas-Martinez Julio C, Syed Faatimah, Vossel Keith, Miller Bruce L, Rabinovici Gil D, Kramer Joel H, Rankin Katherine P, Nagarajan Srikantan S
Department of Neurology, Memory and Aging Center, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA.
Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94143, USA.
Brain Commun. 2025 Apr 4;7(2):fcaf131. doi: 10.1093/braincomms/fcaf131. eCollection 2025.
Spatiotemporal patterns of neural oscillations change with ageing, even in the cognitively unimpaired individual. Whether these neurophysiological changes represent ageing-related vulnerabilities or mechanisms that support cognitive resilience remains largely unknown. In this study, we used magnetoencephalography imaging to examine age-related changes of resting-state whole-brain neurophysiology in a well-characterized cohort of cognitively unimpaired individuals ( = 70; age range 52-87 years). We quantified spatial patterns of age-related changes in band-limited spectral power within delta-theta (2-7 Hz), alpha (8-12 Hz) and beta (13-30 Hz) bands and the spectral aperiodic slope (15-50 Hz), and examined how spectral changes are associated with cognitive abilities in healthy ageing. In a subset of individuals ( = 40) who were evaluated with a uniform battery of cognitive tests, using a partial least square regression approach, we examined the associations between age-related spectral changes and cognitive performance. We found that, with advancing age, delta-theta and beta spectral power reduces, while alpha spectral power increases. A periodic slope also showed reductions with ageing. Better cognitive scores were positively correlated with delta-theta reductions and alpha power increases associated with ageing, suggesting that these may represent compensatory neural mechanisms. Beta power reductions and spectral aperiodic slope changes, in contrast, correlated negatively with higher cognitive scores, suggesting that these may represent compromised neural mechanisms of ageing. Our findings highlighted that the neurophysiological changes that occur during later decades of life were distinct from the previously known lifespan changes. This study demonstrates the trajectories of neurophysiological changes in cognitive ageing explicitly relating to conserved and impaired neural mechanisms with important implications for identifying specific spectral changes in neurodegenerative processes in the context of ageing.
即使在认知未受损的个体中，神经振荡的时空模式也会随着年龄增长而变化。这些神经生理变化是代表与衰老相关的脆弱性还是支持认知恢复力的机制，在很大程度上仍然未知。在本研究中，我们使用脑磁图成像来检查一组特征明确的认知未受损个体（n = 70；年龄范围52 - 87岁）静息态全脑神经生理学的年龄相关变化。我们量化了δ-θ（2 - 7Hz）、α（8 - 12Hz）和β（13 - 30Hz）频段内带限频谱功率以及频谱非周期性斜率（15 - 50Hz）的年龄相关变化的空间模式，并研究了频谱变化如何与健康衰老中的认知能力相关联。在一组接受统一认知测试电池评估的个体（n = 40）中，我们使用偏最小二乘回归方法研究了年龄相关频谱变化与认知表现之间的关联。我们发现，随着年龄的增长，δ-θ和β频谱功率降低，而α频谱功率增加。非周期性斜率也随着衰老而降低。更好的认知分数与衰老相关的δ-θ降低和α功率增加呈正相关，这表明这些可能代表补偿性神经机制。相比之下，β功率降低和频谱非周期性斜率变化与较高的认知分数呈负相关，这表明这些可能代表衰老受损的神经机制。我们的研究结果强调，生命后期几十年发生的神经生理变化与先前已知的寿命变化不同。这项研究明确展示了认知衰老中神经生理变化的轨迹，这些变化与保守和受损的神经机制相关，对在衰老背景下识别神经退行性过程中的特定频谱变化具有重要意义。
