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Differences in dynamic and static functional connectivity between young and elderly healthy adults

  • Functional Neuroradiology
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Abstract

Purpose

Brain connectivity is highly dynamic, but functional connectivity (FC) studies using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) assume it to be static. This study assessed differences in dynamic FC between young healthy adults (YH) and elderly healthy adults (EH) compared to static FC.

Methods

Using rs-fMRI data from 12 YH and 31 EH, FC was assessed in six functional regions (subcortical, auditory [AUD], sensorimotor [SM], visuospatial [VS], cognitive control [CC], and default mode network [DMN]). Static FC was calculated as Fisher’s z-transformed correlation coefficient. The sliding time window correlation (window size 30 s, step size 3 s) was applied for dynamic FC, and the standard deviation across sliding windows was calculated. Differences in static and dynamic FC between EH and YH were calculated and compared by region.

Results

EH showed decreased static FC in the subcortical, CC, and DMN regions (FDR corrected p = 0.0013; 74 regions), with no regions showing static FC higher than that in YH. EH showed increased dynamic FC in the subcortical, CC, and DMN regions, whereas decreased dynamic FC in CC and DMN regions (p < 0.01). However, the regions showing differences between EH and YH did not overlap between static and dynamic FC.

Conclusion

Dynamic FC exhibited differences from static FC in EH and YH, mainly in regions involved in cognitive control and the DMN. Altered dynamic FC demonstrated both qualitatively and quantitatively distinct patterns of transient brain activity and needs to be studied as an imaging biomarker in the aging process.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Mr. Bumwoo Park for assistance with imaging processing data analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiology and Research Institute of Radiology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, 86 Asanbyeongwon-Gil, Songpa-Gu, Seoul, 138-736, South Korea

    Ji Eun Park, Seung Chai Jung, Kyeoung Hwa Ryu, Joo Young Oh, Ho Sung Kim, Choong-Gon Choi, Sang Joon Kim & Woo Hyun Shim

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  1. Ji Eun Park
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Correspondence to Seung Chai Jung.

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Funding

This study was funded by a grant from the Korea Healthcare Technology R&D Project, Ministry for Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs, Republic of Korea (HI12C1847).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. For this type of study formal consent is not required.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Park, J.E., Jung, S.C., Ryu, K.H. et al. Differences in dynamic and static functional connectivity between young and elderly healthy adults. Neuroradiology 59, 781–789 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-017-1875-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00234-017-1875-2

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