Functional connectome fingerprinting across the lifespan.
Frédéric St-Onge1,2, Mohammadali Javanray1,2, Alexa Pichet Binette3
1Integrated Program in Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.
Network Neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.)
|October 2, 2023
Summary
Brain functional connectivity provides a unique "connectome fingerprint" for individual identification across all ages. This "self-identifiability" shows a U-shaped pattern with age, decreasing in middle age before recovering in older adults.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Brain Imaging
- Aging Research
Background:
- Brain's functional architecture changes systematically with age.
- Functional connectivity (FC) can create unique "connectome fingerprints" for individual identification.
- Previous studies confirmed fingerprinting in young adults, but lifespan reliability was unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the reliability of functional connectivity fingerprinting across the human lifespan.
- To determine how individual identifiability changes with age.
Main Methods:
- Applied the functional connectivity fingerprinting framework to a large cohort (n=483) aged 18-89 years (Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience).
- Analyzed functional MRI data to assess "self-identifiability" (within-individual consistency) and "others-identifiability" (between-individual distinctiveness).
Main Results:
- Individuals are reliably "fingerprintable" across independent functional MRI scans throughout the lifespan.
- "Self-identifiability" and "others-identifiability" followed a U-shaped distribution, decreasing from early adulthood to middle age, then increasing in older age.
- Brain regions contributing to self-identifiability varied individually and were not confined to specific networks; self-identifiability also correlated with regional brain volume.
Conclusions:
- Individual identification using functional connectivity is preserved across the lifespan.
- The strength of this "connectome fingerprint" changes nonlinearly with age, showing a U-shaped trajectory.
- These findings highlight the enduring uniqueness of individual brain connectomes despite age-related alterations.
