Changes In Brain Functional Connectivity Across Lifespan

The human brain has experienced changes in different levels,scales and directions from the middle of pregnancy to the later years.Previous studies have explained the development and maturity of human brain in terms of structure and function.The question is whether the development of human brain just following such a simple development path of increasing and decreasing?The study of brain connectome is regarded as a network of dynamic changes in space and time.The research methods of network science and graph theory provide us with more perspectives to describe and explore the characteristics of human brain organization and activity.Different from task state fMRI,the research method of resting state fMRI makes us avoid the limitation of endeavor on design and optimization and experimental tasks to study brain activity,and helps us to understand the spontaneous and intrinsic characteristics of brain activity.In this study,492 subjects aged 6-87 were analyzed with resting state fMRI data to explore the changes of brain function network in their lifetime development.In the research,the network hub was identified and defined from a more comprehensive angle,and the network connection was divided into hub-hub connection,feeder connection and peripheral connection.General Linear Model was used to fit the change of the three connection modes in linear and non-linear.Furthermore this study compared the lope in the linear change direction with three different connection types,as well as the fitting age inflection points in the nonlinear were also tested on different shape and connection types.The results show that this three changes have different degrees and distribution characteristics in the four trends,and the network hub has a greater degree of participation in each change.And in the 2x3 ANOVA test of the change shape(linear,nonlinear,U-shaped,inverted U-shaped)and the connection types(hub-hub,feeder,peripheral),results found significant main effect connection type.The main effect of the age inflection point of the nonlinear change and the interaction effect of the change shape and the connection type was also significant.On the basis of repeating the previous research on the characteristics of network hub and functional network connection change trend across life span,this study systematically explored the change trend of different connection modes involving the concept of network hub,and quantitatively compared the characteristics of different change trends and three connection modes on the change rate and age inflection point.