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COMPLEX TIME: Adaptation, Aging, & Arrow of Time

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Cognitive Regime Shift I - When the Brain Breaks/Large-scale Brain Network Changes Across the Healthy Adult Human Lifespan: Relations to Cognition and First Steps toward Identifying Potential Risk Factors of Brain Decline

From Complex Time

July 24, 2018
10:50 am - 11:40 am

Presenter

Gagan Wig (UT Dallas)

Abstract

-Human brain areas are organized into a large-scale functional network, which can be measured at rest using non-invasive brain imaging (functional MRI)


-The brain network contains segregated sub-networks that correspond to functionally specialized brain systems


-The segregation of brain systems declines with increasing age, across the healthy adult lifespan


-System segregation relates to cognitive function in individuals (greater system segregation is associated with better long--term memory ability)


-Certain health risk factors (e.g., lower socioeconomic status) are related to lower system segregation


-My working hypothesis is that gradual and sudden cognitive decline is related to changes in system segregation as an individual ages, and that individual differences in rate and risk of decline are a consequence of the capacity of the functional brain network to tolerate and adapt to damage (neurodegeneration)

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