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2 results

  • Chapter 6 - Enriched Social Connectedness and Brain Function

  • from Part II - Society Interacting with Brain, Cognition, and Health in Late Life
  • Edited by Jeanyung Chey, Seoul National University
  • Book:
    Society within the Brain
    Published online:
    28 September 2023
    Print publication:
    12 October 2023, pp 141-161

  • Summary

    A growing body of evidence suggests a strong link between how individuals maintain an enriched social network and their brain health. Both the quantity and quality of social networks provide abundant social connections. Through persistent social interactions, individuals’ neurocognitive health appears to benefit from cognitively stimulating activity as well as social support. By utilizing various neuroimaging methods, researchers have found that maintaining an enriched social network is likely to lead to better neural functioning that could delay or counter the effects of neuropathological progression in late life. This chapter reviews studies examining the relationship between social network characteristics and neurocognitive health. The studies highlight that social connectedness and brain functioning have reciprocal effects. It also discusses whether larger and cohesively connected social networks lead to a healthier brain and better cognitive function, as well as the moderators of this association.

  • Joint effects of gray matter atrophy and altered functional connectivity on cognitive deficits in amnestic mild cognitive impairment patients

  • C. Xie, F. Bai, B. Yuan, H. Yu, Y. Shi, Y. Yuan, D. Wu, Z.-S. Zhang, Z.-J. Zhang
  • Journal:
    Psychological Medicine / Volume 45 / Issue 9 / July 2015
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    16 December 2014, pp. 1799-1810
  • Background

    Gray matter (GM) atrophy and disrupted intrinsic functional connectivity (IFC) are often present in patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), which shows high risk of developing into Alzheimer's disease. Little is known, however, about the relationship between GM atrophy and altered IFC, and whether they are related to cognitive decline.

    Method

    A total of 30 aMCI and 26 cognitively normal (CN) subjects were recruited for this study. Optimized voxel-based morphometric and resting-state functional connectivity magnetic resonance imaging approaches were performed to measure the GM volumes (GMVs) and atrophy-related IFC, respectively. Multivariate linear regression analysis was used to examine the effects of GM atrophy and IFC on cognitive performance across subjects, after controlling for the effects of age, education, gender and group.

    Results

    Compared with CN subjects, aMCI subjects showed significantly reduced GMVs and decreased IFC in the frontal-parietal and medial temporal lobe systems. Multivariate regression analysis further demonstrated that the GMVs and decreased IFC simultaneously affected the cognitive function. Specifically, GMVs were positively correlated with cognitive performances, including global cognition and episodic memory, and showed a strong trend in correlation between GMVs and non-episodic memory, whilst IFC was positively correlated with the above three cognitive measures, across all subjects. In addition, significant correlation was found between GMVs and altered IFC strength across all subjects.

    Conclusions

    Our findings demonstrated that GMVs and IFC jointly contribute to cognitive performance, and combining quantitative information about GMVs and the strength of functional connectivity may serve as an indicator of cognitive deficits in non-demented elderly.