High-order interdependencies in the aging brain

摘要: Brain interdependencies can be studied either from a structural/anatomical perspective ("structural connectivity", SC) or by considering statistical ("functional FC). Interestingly, while SC is typically pairwise (white-matter fibers start in certain region and arrive at another), FC not; however, most analyses focus only on statistics neglect high-order interactions. A promising tool to study the recently proposed O-Information, which quantify intrinsic synergy redundancy groups of three more interacting variables. In this paper we used O-Information investigate how are affected age. For this, analised functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data rest obtained 164 healthy participants, ranging 10 80 years old. Our results show that older subjects (age 60 years) exhibit higher predominance redundant dependencies than younger subjects; moreover, effect seems pervasive, taking place all interaction orders. Additionally, found these effects highly heterogeneous across brain regions, suggest existence "redundancy core" formed prefrontal motor cortices, thus involving functions such as working memory, executive functions. methodology assess fMRI has unlimited applications. The code calculate metrics freely available.