Relationship of fMRI-derived arousal patterns to healthy aging
Poster No:
1197
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Sarah Goodale1, Shiyu Wang1, Kate Wang1, Catie Chang1
Institutions:
1Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
In aging populations, daytime fatigue and sleepiness can be prominent and can impact everyday behavior and cognitive function [1-4]. Moreover, aging can be accompanied by disruptions of subcortical brain regions that are implicated in the regulation of arousal. Investigating the whole brain correlates of arousal may, therefore, contribute to our understanding of age-related functional changes. In this study, we leverage subject-specific arousal patterns to investigate how arousal-related hemodynamic fluctuations across the brain correlate with healthy aging.
Methods:
This study used 3T fMRI data (n = 499) from the Human Connectome Project – Aging dataset [5], spanning an age range of 36-85 years. We use an established arousal "template" map [6,7], created from simultaneous EEG-fMRI data, to extract subject-specific arousal maps for each subject using a method akin to dual regression [8]. We then evaluated how arousal patterns correlate to healthy adult aging using voxel-wise regression to evaluate their relationship. We co-varied for sex, race, education, and total intracranial volume. Significant clusters were identified using a threshold-free cluster enhancement from FSL Randomize [9].
Results:
Voxel-wise regression analysis demonstrated that arousal-related fMRI activity was significantly (p < 0.01, TCFE multiple comparisons) associated with age in regions such as the lingual gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, insula, cuneus, post-central gyrus, amygdala, thalamus, and lateral ventricles (Figure 1).
·Figure 1. Relationship between whole-brain arousal patterns and aging. Map was thresholded to reveal only regions that were significant at p<0.01 corrected, using threshold-free cluster enhancement.
Conclusions:
Overall, this analysis reveals significant relationships between age and fMRI arousal fluctuations, suggesting that further investigation of the functional circuits linked with arousal could contribute to our understanding of age-related changes in the brain. Future work will conduct complementary analysis of arousal-related brain signals, leverage other forms of tracking arousal such as simultaneous pupil data, and compare these findings with age-related changes in the fMRI global signal [10]. Additionally, we will explore how age-related changes in whole-brain arousal fluctuations could be implicated in cognitive decline.
Lifespan Development:
Aging 1
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Exploratory Modeling and Artifact Removal
Task-Independent and Resting-State Analysis 2
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI
Keywords:
Aging
FUNCTIONAL MRI
Other - vigilance, resting-state
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
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