Trajectory of rich club properties in structural brain networks

Abstract

Many organizational principles of structural brain networks are established before birth and undergo considerable developmental changes afterwards. These include the topologically central hub regions and a densely connected rich club. While several studies have mapped developmental trajectories of brain connectivity and brain network organization across childhood and adolescence, comparatively little is known about subsequent development over the course of the lifespan. Here, we present a cross‐sectional analysis of structural brain network development in N = 8066 participants aged 5–80 years. Across all brain regions, structural connectivity strength followed an “inverted‐U”‐shaped trajectory with vertex in the early 30s. Connectivity strength of hub regions showed a similar trajectory and the identity of hub regions remained stable across all age groups. While connectivity strength declined with advancing age, the organization of hub regions into a rich club did not only remain intact but became more pronounced, presumingly through a selected sparing of relevant connections from age‐related connectivity loss. The stability of rich club organization in the face of overall age‐related decline is consistent with a “first come, last served” model of neurodevelopment, where the first principles to develop are the last to decline with age. Rich club organization has been shown to be highly beneficial for communicability and higher cognition. A resilient rich club might thus be protective of a functional loss in late adulthood and represent a neural reserve to sustain cognitive functioning in the aging brain.

Asymmetric signaling across the hierarchy of cytoarchitecture within the human connectome

“…Future work may consider replicating our effects in life-span data to examine the extent to which energy asymmetries are a general feature of connectome organization. This is particularly pertinent given recent work showing protracted changes to the rich club of the connectome across 5 to 80 years of age ( 76 ).…”

The significance of structural rich club hubs for the processing of hierarchical stimuli

“…Based on this range of k with significantly larger empirical RC coefficients $$$ \phi (k) $$$, we identified individual hubs by following the criteria used in Riedel et al (2022) (Figure 3): (a) The regions belonged to the top 15% of the degree distribution (also applied in, e.g., Liu et al, 2020; Repple et al, 2020; Yan et al, 2018). (b) The region's degree was at least as large as the start degree of the RC regime, so the first node degree k for which the empirical RC coefficient $$$ \phi (k) $$$ is significantly larger than in the random networks.…”

“…Cao et al, 2013;Z. Chen et al, 2013;Riedel et al, 2022;Wang, Zhan, et al, 2019), the anterior and posterior cortex cingulate (Huang et al, 2015) as well as the paracentral lobe (Z. Chen et al, 2013) and the superior and middle occipital lobe (Q.…”

“…structural network property across different individuals and age groups (Ball et al, 2014;Grayson et al, 2014;Kocher et al, 2015;Riedel et al, 2022;Sporns, 2013). theorized that the RC serves as a global workspace that integrates information from many different areas with unparalleled efficiency (Crossley et al, 2013;Harriger et al, 2012;Hermundstad et al, 2013;Zamora-L opez et al, 2010).…”

Brain system segregation and pain catastrophizing in chronic pain progression

“…Concretely we will study networks system segregation (SyS) ( Wig, 2017 ), a paradigm based on the idea that effective network functioning is supported by maintaining subnetworks’ segregation while simultaneously allowing integration between them ( Wig, 2017 ), resulting in a brain more adaptable to task demands. Brain networks’ segregation degree has been previously associated with cognitive abilities in healthy adults and patients affected by neurologic diseases ( van den Heuvel and Sporns, 2013 ; Malagurski et al, 2020 ; Ewers et al, 2021 ; Riedel et al, 2021 ).…”