Fan Jiawen, Juttukonda Meher R, Goodale Sarah E, Wang Shiyu, Orbán Csaba, Varadarajan Divya, Polimeni Jonathan R, Chang Catie, Salat David H, Chen Jingyuan E
Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Commun Biol. 2025 Aug 27;8(1):1287. doi: 10.1038/s42003-025-08703-7.
While traditionally regarded as "noise", blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) fluctuations coupled to systemic physiology-such as heart rate and respiratory changes-also hold valuable information about brain vascular properties and autonomic function. In this study, we leverage these physiological signals to characterize age-related changes in brain physiology, drawing on a large dataset from the Lifespan Human Connectome Project Aging study. Our findings reveal that aging is associated with globally slower respiratory fMRI responses, alongside faster cardiac fMRI responses and enhanced brain-cardiac signal coupling. Moreover, we show that the impact of age on physiological fMRI signals exhibits a notable turning point after age 60, suggesting a critical role of declining vascular health and autonomic function in aging. The potential impact of age-related changes in brain structure, tissue perfusion, and in-scan arousal states on the identified physiological fMRI patterns is also tested and discussed. Altogether, our results underscore significant age effects in the fMRI signatures of systemic physiology, emphasizing the pivotal role of altered vascular properties and autonomic function in aging. Methodologically, this study also demonstrates the utility of resting-state fMRI for extracting multi-parametric information about brain physiology, offering new biomarker opportunities that complement established functional connectivity metrics.
虽然传统上被视为“噪声”，但与全身生理（如心率和呼吸变化）相关的血氧水平依赖（BOLD）功能磁共振成像（fMRI）波动也包含有关脑血管特性和自主神经功能的宝贵信息。在本研究中，我们利用这些生理信号来表征大脑生理的年龄相关变化，借助来自寿命人类连接组计划衰老研究的大型数据集。我们的研究结果表明，衰老与全球范围内呼吸fMRI反应变慢有关，同时心脏fMRI反应更快，脑心信号耦合增强。此外，我们表明年龄对生理fMRI信号的影响在60岁后呈现出一个显著的转折点，这表明血管健康和自主神经功能下降在衰老过程中起着关键作用。还测试并讨论了大脑结构、组织灌注和扫描内觉醒状态的年龄相关变化对所识别的生理fMRI模式的潜在影响。总之，我们的结果强调了全身生理fMRI特征中显著的年龄效应，强调了血管特性和自主神经功能改变在衰老中的关键作用。在方法上，本研究还证明了静息态fMRI在提取大脑生理多参数信息方面的实用性，提供了补充已建立的功能连接指标的新生物标志物机会。
