Human lifespan changes in the brain’s functional connectome | Nature Neuroscience (Paywalled)
Interestingly on the last figure we see a small bump between 50 and 70!
Abstract
Functional connectivity of the human brain changes through life. Here, we assemble task-free functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data from 33,250 individuals at 32 weeks of postmenstrual age to 80 years from 132 global sites. We report critical inflection points in the nonlinear growth curves of the global mean and variance of the connectome, peaking in the late fourth and late third decades of life, respectively. After constructing a fine-grained, lifespan-wide suite of system-level brain atlases, we show distinct maturation timelines for functional segregation within different systems. Lifespan growth of regional connectivity is organized along a spatiotemporal cortical axis, transitioning from primary sensorimotor regions to higher-order association regions. These findings elucidate the lifespan evolution of the functional connectome and can serve as a normative reference for quantifying individual variation in development, aging and neuropsychiatric disorders.
Extended Data Fig. 1 Distance-related lifespan growth patterns of the global connectome.
Extended Data Fig. 2 Lifespan growth patterns in interindividual variability of the functional connectome.
Extended Data Fig. 6 Sex differences in the normative growth curves of the functional connectome at global, system, and regional levels.
Extended Data Fig. 8 Lifespan normative growth patterns of negative functional connectivity.
