INS NYC 2024 Program

Poster	Poster Session 04 Program Schedule 02/15/2024 12:00 pm - 01:15 pm Room: Shubert Complex (Posters 1-60) Poster Session 04: Neuroimaging \| Neurostimulation/Neuromodulation \| Teleneuropsychology/Technology Final Abstract #11 Brain Resilience to Targeted Attack of Resting BOLD Networks as a Measure of Cognitive Reserve Georgette Argiris, Columbia University, New York, United States Yaakov Stern, Columbia University, New York, United States Christian Habeck, Columbia University, New York, United States Category: Aging Keyword 1: aging (normal) Keyword 2: neuroimaging: functional connectivity Keyword 3: fluid intelligence Objective: Recent advancements in connectome analyses allow for more fine-grained measurements of brain network integrity. One measure of integrity is resilience, or the capacity of the network to retain functionality when confronted with endogenous or exogenous perturbations that result in damage or error. We aimed to assess the impact of individual differences in the resilience of resting BOLD connectivity on the relationship between cognitive and brain changes in a lifespan cohort of cognitively healthy adults over a 5-year period. Participants and Methods: One hundred twenty-six cognitively healthy participants from the Reference Ability Neural Network (RANN) longitudinal lifespan cohort (age 20-80 years) underwent resting state fMRI to measure functional connectivity and an out-of-scanner neuropsychological battery at baseline and five-year follow-up. Undirected weighted adjacency matrices were generated based on the time series correlations of all nodal pairings from a 419-region of interest (ROI) parcellation comprising 400 cortical and 19 subcortical ROIs (Schaefer et al., 2018). As a measure of whole-brain network resilience, we adopted a targeted attack approach described by Albert and colleagues (2000, 2002), whereby nodes are sequentially virtually "lesioned" from the connectome in order of their nodal strength. At each iteration of attack, nodal strength is recalculated based on the effect of prior lesioning and the largest connected component (LCC) of the connectome is measured. Prior work has shown that the larger the LCC, the more robust a network is to nodal attack (Albert et al., 2000; Menardi et al., 2021). We therefore inferred that more resilient individuals will sustain larger LCCs over longer iterations of lesioning before decay in LCC becomes evident; resilience was thus operationalized as the iteration at which the slope of LCC decay is steepest. References Schaefer, A. et al. (2018). Local-global parcellation of the human cerebral cortex from intrinsic functional connectivity MRI. Cerebral Cortex, 28(9), 3095-3114. Albert, R. & Barabási, A-L. (2002). Statistical mechanics of complex networks. Rev. Mod. Phys, 74, 47-97. Albert, R. et al. (2000). Error and attack tolerance of complex networks. Nature, 406, 378–382. Menardi, A. et al. (2021). Heritability of brain resilience to perturbation in humans. Neuroimage, 235, 118013. Results: We tested whether our operationalization of brain resilience (BR) moderated the effect of brain integrity (i.e., cortical thickness; CT) on out-of-scanner neuropsychological test performance across our four domains of cognition in the context of longitudinal change (∆) over time. After accounting for baseline differences in our change variables and adjusting for the demographic factors of Age, Sex, NART IQ, and Education, we observed a significant negative interaction between ∆CT and ∆BR on ΔCognition for the Fluid Reasoning domain. Conclusions: Individuals with increased brain resilience over time were less sensitive to the effect of changes in cortical thickness on changes in cognition. Our finding supports evidence for targeted attack as a measure of cognitive reserve, where higher brain network resilience may have permitted individuals with reduced brain integrity to better cope with structural loss and enhanced preservation of cognitive function.

Poster

02/15/2024
12:00 pm - 01:15 pm
Room: Shubert Complex (Posters 1-60)

Poster Session 04: Neuroimaging | Neurostimulation/Neuromodulation | Teleneuropsychology/Technology

Final Abstract #11

Brain Resilience to Targeted Attack of Resting BOLD Networks as a Measure of Cognitive Reserve

Georgette Argiris, Columbia University, New York, United States
Yaakov Stern, Columbia University, New York, United States
Christian Habeck, Columbia University, New York, United States

Category: Aging

Keyword 1: aging (normal)
Keyword 2: neuroimaging: functional connectivity
Keyword 3: fluid intelligence

Objective:

Recent advancements in connectome analyses allow for more fine-grained measurements of brain network integrity. One measure of integrity is resilience, or the capacity of the network to retain functionality when confronted with endogenous or exogenous perturbations that result in damage or error. We aimed to assess the impact of individual differences in the resilience of resting BOLD connectivity on the relationship between cognitive and brain changes in a lifespan cohort of cognitively healthy adults over a 5-year period.

Participants and Methods:

One hundred twenty-six cognitively healthy participants from the Reference Ability Neural Network (RANN) longitudinal lifespan cohort (age 20-80 years) underwent resting state fMRI to measure functional connectivity and an out-of-scanner neuropsychological battery at baseline and five-year follow-up. Undirected weighted adjacency matrices were generated based on the time series correlations of all nodal pairings from a 419-region of interest (ROI) parcellation comprising 400 cortical and 19 subcortical ROIs (Schaefer et al., 2018). As a measure of whole-brain network resilience, we adopted a targeted attack approach described by Albert and colleagues (2000, 2002), whereby nodes are sequentially virtually "lesioned" from the connectome in order of their nodal strength. At each iteration of attack, nodal strength is recalculated based on the effect of prior lesioning and the largest connected component (LCC) of the connectome is measured. Prior work has shown that the larger the LCC, the more robust a network is to nodal attack (Albert et al., 2000; Menardi et al., 2021). We therefore inferred that more resilient individuals will sustain larger LCCs over longer iterations of lesioning before decay in LCC becomes evident; resilience was thus operationalized as the iteration at which the slope of LCC decay is steepest.

References

Schaefer, A. et al. (2018). Local-global parcellation of the human cerebral cortex from intrinsic functional connectivity MRI. Cerebral Cortex, 28(9), 3095-3114.

Albert, R. & Barabási, A-L. (2002). Statistical mechanics of complex networks. Rev. Mod. Phys, 74, 47-97.

Albert, R. et al. (2000). Error and attack tolerance of complex networks. Nature, 406, 378–382.

Menardi, A. et al. (2021). Heritability of brain resilience to perturbation in humans. Neuroimage, 235, 118013.

Results:

We tested whether our operationalization of brain resilience (BR) moderated the effect of brain integrity (i.e., cortical thickness; CT) on out-of-scanner neuropsychological test performance across our four domains of cognition in the context of longitudinal change (∆) over time. After accounting for baseline differences in our change variables and adjusting for the demographic factors of Age, Sex, NART IQ, and Education, we observed a significant negative interaction between ∆CT and ∆BR on ΔCognition for the Fluid Reasoning domain.

Conclusions:

Individuals with increased brain resilience over time were less sensitive to the effect of changes in cortical thickness on changes in cognition. Our finding supports evidence for targeted attack as a measure of cognitive reserve, where higher brain network resilience may have permitted individuals with reduced brain integrity to better cope with structural loss and enhanced preservation of cognitive function.