Abstract
Lateralization of function is an important organization of the human brain. The distribution of intrinsic networks in the resting brain is strongly related to cognitive function, gender and age. In this study, a longitudinal design with 1 year’s duration was used to evaluate the cognitive training effects on the lateralization of intrinsic networks among healthy older adults. The subjects were divided into two groups randomly: one with multi-domain cognitive training over 3 months and the other as a wait-list control group. Resting state fMRI data were acquired before training and 1 year after training. We analyzed the functional lateralization in 10 common resting state fMRI networks. We observed statically significant training effects on the lateralization of two important RSNs related to high-level cognition: right- and left- frontoparietal networks (FPNs). The lateralization of the left-FPN was retained especially well in the training group but decreased in the control group. The increased lateralization with aging was observed in the cerebellum network (CereN), in which the lateralization was significantly increased in the control group, although the same change tendency was observed in the training group. These findings indicate that the lateralization of the high-level cognitive intrinsic networks is sensitive to multi-domain cognitive training. This study provides neuroimaging evidence to support the hypothesis that cognitive training should have an advantage in preventing cognitive decline in healthy older adults.
Highlights
The human brain is the most complex system in nature
DMN: default mode network (DMN) mainly encompasses posterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal gyrus, bilateral superior frontal gyrus, and bilateral angular gyri (Raichle et al, 2001; Damoiseaux et al, 2006; Luo et al, 2012c). lFPN: left lateral frontoparietal networks (FPNs) along with right lateral FPN showed the similar spatial patterns with DAN consisting of regions previously known to be involved in goal-directed topdown processing (Damoiseaux et al, 2006; Luo et al, 2012c)
We used the laterality cofactor (LCF) (Agcaoglu et al, 2015) of intrinsic networks resulting from the resting functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the effects of multi-domain cognitive training on healthy older adults
Summary
The human brain is the most complex system in nature. The interhemispheric interaction is crucial to brain functions such as motor and cognitive processes. Resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been widely used in the studies of the human brain in which it was organized into several intrinsic resting state networks (RSNs). More and more studies have provided the evidence to support the importance of these RSNs on the brain function, such as default mode and attention. The spatial pattern of these RSNs is relatively stable across subjects. These RSNs demonstrate either spatial hemispheric symmetry, such as the default mode network (DMN) and sensorimotor network (SMN), or hemispheric asymmetry, such as the frontoparietal network (FPN) and attention network (Fox et al, 2006). Hemispheric symmetry, which is represented by the spatial lateralization of RSNs, may reflect the slight changes of RSNs in different states of the brain. The lateralization of RSNs is observed to be significantly altered in healthy older adults compared with younger adults (Agcaoglu et al, 2015; Seidler et al, 2015)
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