Navigation auf zora.uzh.ch

Search ZORA

ZORA (Zurich Open Repository and Archive)

Small Changes, But Huge Impact? The Right Anterior Insula's Loss of Connection Strength during the Transition of Old to Very Old Age

Muller, Angela M; Mérillat, Susan; Jäncke, Lutz (2016). Small Changes, But Huge Impact? The Right Anterior Insula's Loss of Connection Strength during the Transition of Old to Very Old Age. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, 8:86.

Abstract

A major contribution to our understanding of the aging brain comes either from studies comparing young with older adults or from studies investigating pathological aging and using the healthy aging older adults as control group. In consequence, we know relatively well, what distinguishes young from old brains or pathological aging from healthy but that does not mean that we really understand the structural and functional transformations characterizing the healthy aging brain. By analyzing task-free fMRI data from a large cross-sectional sample of 186 older adults (mean age = 70.4, 97 female), we aimed to elucidate age-related changes in the intrinsically active functional architecture of the brain in our study group covering an age range from 65 to 85 years. First, we conducted an intrinsic connectivity contrast analysis (ICC) in order to detect the brain regions whose degree of connectedness was significantly correlated with increasing age. Secondly, using connectivity analyses we investigated how the clusters highlighted by the ICC analysis functionally related to the other major resting-state networks. The most important finding was the right anterior insula's loss of connectedness in the older participants of the study group because of the region's causal role in the switching from the task-negative to the task-positive state of the brain. Further, we found a higher functional dedifferentiation of two of the brain's major intrinsic connectivity networks, the DMN, and the cingulo-opercular network, caused by a reduction of functional connection strength, especially in the frontal regions. At last, we showed that all these age-related changes have the potential to impair older adult's performance of working memory tasks.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Journal Article, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:04 Faculty of Medicine > Zurich Center for Integrative Human Physiology (ZIHP)
06 Faculty of Arts > Institute of Psychology
08 Research Priority Programs > Dynamics of Healthy Aging
Dewey Decimal Classification:150 Psychology
Scopus Subject Areas:Life Sciences > Aging
Life Sciences > Cognitive Neuroscience
Uncontrolled Keywords:DoktoratPsych Erstautor
Language:English
Date:2016
Deposited On:13 Jun 2016 13:01
Last Modified:15 Oct 2024 01:39
Publisher:Frontiers Research Foundation
ISSN:1663-4365
OA Status:Gold
Free access at:PubMed ID. An embargo period may apply.
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00086
PubMed ID:27242508
Project Information:
  • Funder: FP7
  • Grant ID: 226369
  • Project Title: OPEN METER - Open Public Extended Network metering
Download PDF  'Small Changes, But Huge Impact? The Right Anterior Insula's Loss of Connection Strength during the Transition of Old to Very Old Age'.
Preview
  • Content: Published Version
  • Language: English
  • Licence: Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Metadata Export

Statistics

Citations

Dimensions.ai Metrics
17 citations in Web of Science®
17 citations in Scopus®
Google Scholar™

Altmetrics

Downloads

72 downloads since deposited on 13 Jun 2016
5 downloads since 12 months
Detailed statistics

Authors, Affiliations, Collaborations

Similar Publications