Synopsis
To reveal the age related
changes of dynamic function connectivity during rest, five networks were extracted
from resting stated fMRI data of 36 young people and 32 old people. The sliding
window was carefully selected and the FC variation and the fluctuation energy
in detailed frequency band were statistically compared. Decreased FCV and slowing fluctuation in
inter-networks were mainly found in old group. OCC and CON, OCC and FP were the
most consistent inter-networks between this two age related changes. We
concluded that FCV and fluctuation energy had provided a new perspective of aging
research. Purpose
Functional connectivity of
resting-stated fMRI networks reveals much about the normal aging.
1,2
However the functional connectivity is verified to be time-varying over even
minutes.
3 This paper is to
investigate the age related changes on the variation and fluctuation energy of dynamic function connectivity networks.
Methods
68 healthy
subjects rsfMRI data, from the NKI-Rockland Sample which is provided by the
Nathan Kline Institute (NKI, Orangeburg, NY, USA), were divided into two
groups: 36 young subjects are assigned into one group (aged from 20 to 25, 24
males); 32 old subjects are assigned into the other group (aged from 60 to 85,
15 males). All approvals and procedures for collection and sharing of data were
approved by the NKI institutional review board. According to the demographic
characteristics information provided by NKI-RS data set, there is remarkable
difference merely in age and no significant difference in gender and hand
dominance. The experiments were acquired on 3.0 T SIMENS scanner with following
setting: TR/TE = 2500/30ms, Flip angle(FA) = 80, FOV=216×216mm
2,
voxel size = 3×3×3mm
3, slicer = 38, scan time=650s, time points
=260. High-resolution T1-weighted images were also acquired with
TR/TE=2500/3.5ms, FA=8, FOV=256×256mm
2, voxel size = 1×1×1mm
3,
slice = 192. All the rsfMRI data were preprocessed using the Connectome
Computation System
4,5. We selected Montreal Neurological Institute
(MNI) coordinates that have been identified as 142 nodes in cingulo-opercular
network(CON), default mode network(DMN), fronto-parietal network(FP), occipital
network(OCC), and Sensorimotor network(SM), republished by Dosenbach. Firstly,
variou length of sliding window were used to obtain and show how the FC fluctuation
including FC variation and fluctuation frequency spectrum varied with window
length on one young induvidual. Secondly, A window length of 24TR(60 sec) was
used to obtain the FC fluctuation. Then FC variation and frequency energy of
the fluctuation were calculated respectively. In the frequency analysis, a five-odere
wavelet packet method was ultilized the seprate the fluctuation into detailed
frequency bands which had 0.00625Hz, and energy in each band was normalized by
the total. In the end, FCV and normalized energy in all frequency bands were
compared respectively between two groups on the within- and inter- networks.
FDR corrected p<0.05 was used.
Results
From the
Figure 1, as the window length increasing, the FC changed in three stages which
were divided by the 20TR(50sec) and 120TR(300sec). In the first when window was
short, the FC showed high variation as well as the mean FC. In the third stage
when window was long, the meang FC was steady and closed to the static FC,and
the variaion was small. In the second stage, the mean FC as wel as the
variation were both relatively stable. As
the increasing of window length, the low frequency was always stable but the
high frequency. The white line was the 0.0125Hz . With the length of 24TR(60sec)
in Figure 2, the dynamic FC showed higher FC variation bewteen networks in
young group, especially networks related with OCC and SM. Within the networks,
only FP shoed decreased in old group. In the frequency analysis, only the
lowest two band showed significant sifference (E1:<0.00625Hz and E2:>0.00625Hz). The low frequency E1 indecated to be
increased in old group and the high frequency E2 indecated to be decreased in
old group. All these differences were locaed between the networks, especially
the OCC and CON, OCC and FP. In the Figure 2, T statistics was color encoded
under the significnace threshold of FDR corrected p<0.05.
Discussion
The sliding window length
is always an important issue in dynamic FC. The short window is inadvisable as
that may lead high variation and instability.
6 When the window is
long enough, it closes to or is static FC, since the static FC is reliable only
when the resting time of duration is longer than about 4 min.
5,6 So
we think that the length of 24TR(60sec) in this paper is receivable. Then,
although there is a low-pass effect on the fluctuation as the rectangular
window, we have calculated and confirmed that this cannot impact the results as
the cut-off frequency is higher than the E2 frequency. The dynamic FC is mainly associated with the
inter-networks which reflect the functional connectivity coding and the networks
cooperation. When the brain is aging, these networks cooperation may be
decreased and difficult in some complicated tasks. The information processing
and encoding need the brain connectivity varies anytime to fulfill the task demands.
The FCV and the fluctuation energy are
two important measurements and have been demonstrated to be effective to reveal
the age related brain change. FCV can measure the tasks related functional
variation
7,8 and also the capability during rest. The low frequency fluctuation
of dynamic FC, which includes E1 and E2 in this paper, has also been studied to
predict the functional maturity in teenagers.
9 These changes in the
frequency energy showed a lowing fluctuation in aging group and slow wave is
popular in various brain diseases. This may represent the speed capability of encoding,
handling or adopting different information.
9,10 The consistent inter-networks
results from FCV and frequency may also confirm the reliability of the two
dynamic features.
Conclusion
What can
be concluded is that resting stated dynamic FC reflects the age related
functional declines as aging, which can represent the ability of transforming
or adapting various and complex tasks. FCV and low frequency are two important
features of dynamic FC to reveal the aging mechanism. This is a promising view of resting-stated
based human brain development explore.
Acknowledgements
This paper was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81571762, 81222021, 31500865), National Key Technology R&D Program of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2012BAI34B02) , the Tianjin Research Program of Application Foundation and Advanced Technology (13JCQNJC14400) and the Tianjin Bureau of Public Health Foundation (11KG108).References
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