When functional blurring becomes deleterious: Reduced system segregation is associated with less white matter integrity and cognitive decline in aging

• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118449
• Publication Date: 2021-08-03T16:03:02Z
• Authors: Robin Pedersen; Linda Geerligs; Micael Andersson; Tetiana Gorbach; Bárbara Avelar-Pe...; Anders Wåhlin; Anna Rieckmann; Lars Nyberg; Alireza Salami
• Keywords: Cognitive Decline

Healthy aging is accompanied by progressive decline in cognitive performance and concomitant changes brain structure functional architecture. Age-accompanied alterations function have been characterized on a network level as weaker connections within networks along with stronger interactions between networks. This phenomenon has described age-related differences segregation. It suggested that related to associative processes are particularly sensitive deterioration segregation, possibly aging. However, there only few longitudinal studies inconclusive results. Here, we used large sample of 284 participants 25 80 years age at baseline, neuroimaging data collected up three time points over 10-year period. We investigated segregation among two large-scale systems comprising sensorimotor-related resting-state found declines exacerbated from the late fifties. Changes were positively associated global ability, suggesting decreased negative consequences for domain-general functions. Age-related system partly accounted white matter integrity, but integrity weakly influenced association cognition. Together, these novel findings suggest cascade where reduced white-matter leads less distinctive which turn contributes