Age-related Multiscale Changes in Brain Signal Variability in Pre-task versus Post-task Resting-state EEG

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Aging
• Brain Dynamics

Background:

• Healthy aging alters network dynamics during tasks, reflecting functional network changes.
• Previous research focused on task-based dynamics, leaving resting-state changes less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how aging affects resting-state brain dynamics.
• To examine the interaction between resting-state activity and task-induced activity across different age groups.

Main Methods:

• Electroencephalography (EEG) recorded in young, middle-aged, and older adults.
• Utilized a "rest-task-rest" paradigm.
• Applied multiscale entropy to measure neural variability.

Main Results:

• Older adults exhibited a shift from distributed to local resting-state neural processing, particularly in posterior brain regions.
• Young adults showed pre- to post-task changes in resting-state dynamics, with increased fine-scale entropy in task-positive areas and coarse-scale entropy in the default mode network.
• The link between resting-state dynamics and task performance weakened with age.

Conclusions:

• Aging is associated with changes in resting-state brain dynamics across multiple spatial and temporal scales.
• These age-related alterations in neural processing impact cognitive function and information processing capacity.