Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience (Jul 2014)

An age-related shift of resting-state functional connectivity of the subthalamic nucleus: A potential mechanism for compensating motor performance decline in older adults

  • Christian eMathys,
  • Felix eHoffstaedter,
  • Felix eHoffstaedter,
  • Julian eCaspers,
  • Julian eCaspers,
  • Svenja eCaspers,
  • Martin eSüdmeyer,
  • Martin eSüdmeyer,
  • Christian eGrefkes,
  • Christian eGrefkes,
  • Christian eGrefkes,
  • Simon B. Eickhoff,
  • Simon B. Eickhoff,
  • Robert eLangner,
  • Robert eLangner

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2014.00178
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 6

Abstract

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Healthy aging is associated with decline in basic motor functioning and higher motor control. Here, we investigated age-related differences in the brain-wide functional connectivity (FC) pattern of the subthalamic nucleus (STN), which plays an important role in motor response control. As earlier studies revealed functional coupling between STN and basal ganglia, which both are known to influence the conservativeness of motor responses on a superordinate level, we tested the hypothesis that STN FC with the striatum becomes dysbalanced with age. To this end, we performed a seed-based resting-state analysis of fMRI data from 361 healthy adults (mean age: 41.8, age range 18 - 85) using bilateral STN as seed region of interest. Age was included as a covariate to identify regions showing age-related changes of FC with the STN seed. The analysis revealed positive FC of the STN with several previously described subcortical and cortical regions like the anterior cingulate and sensorimotor cortex, as well as not-yet reported regions including central and posterior insula. With increasing age, we observed reduced positive FC with caudate nucleus, thalamus, and insula as well as increased positive FC with sensorimotor cortex and putamen. Furthermore, an age-related reduction of negative FC was found with precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex. We suggest that this reduced de-coupling of brain areas involved in self-relevant but motor-unrelated cognitive processing (i.e. precuneus and posterior cingulate cortex) from the STN motor network may represent a potential mechanism behind the age-dependent decline in motor performance. At the same time, older adults appear to compensate for this decline by releasing superordinate motor control areas, in particular caudate nucleus and insula, from STN interference while increasing STN-mediated response control over lower-level motor areas like sensorimotor cortex and putamen.

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