Abstract #0774

Age Effects on the Amplitude & Frequency of Resting-State BOLD Fluctuations

J. Jean Chen^1,2, Tyler D. Triggs¹, H. Diana Rosas^1,3, David H. Salat^1,2

¹Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, USA; ²Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; ³Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Spontaneous BOLD fluctuations in the resting-state have been used extensively to investigate neural connectivity, predominantly by examining the correlation between the time courses in multiple brain regions, which can be influenced by the amplitude of BOLD response. Both the amplitude and frequency traits of BOLD have been associated with vascular tone, which can be related to cerebral blood flow (CBF). In this work, we found higher BOLD fluctuation amplitudes to be associated with lower CBF and lower fluctuation frequency. These BOLD time-course parameters are potential indicators of vascular elasticity and hence of cerebrovascular changes in aging and disease.