The Effect of Aging on Resting-State Brain Function: An fMRI Study

Recent studies have found a deleterious effect of age on a wide variety of measures
of functional connectivity, and some hints at a relationship between connectivity at
rest and cognitive functioning. However, few studies have combined multiple functional
connectivity methods, or examined them over a wide range of adult ages, to try
to uncover which metrics and networks seem to be particularly sensitive to agerelated
decline across the adult lifespan. The present study utilized multiple resting
state functional connectivity methods in a sample of adults from 20–80 years old
to gain a more complete understanding of the effect of aging on network function
and integrity. Whole-brain results showed that aging results in weakening average
within-network connectivity, lower system segregation and local efficiency, and higher
participation coefficient. Network-level results suggested that nearly every primary
sensory and cognitive network faces some degree of age-related decline, including
reduced within-network connectivity, higher network-based participation coefficient,
and reduced network-level local efficiency. Further, some of these connectivity metrics
showed relationships with cognitive performance. Thus, these results suggest that a
multi-method analysis of functional connectivity data may be critical to capture the full
effect of aging on the health of brain networks

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