Aging is a major risk factor for cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disorders, with considerable societal and economic implications. Healthy aging is accompanied by changes in connectivity between and within resting-state functional networks, however, there is no consensus on the impact of sex on these age-related alterations. Here, in a large cross-sectional sample of 37543 UK Biobank participants, we show that multilayer measures that capture the interaction between positive and negative connections provide crucial information on the impact of sex on age-related changes in network topology, being closely related to cognitive, structural, and cardiovascular risk factors that have been shown to differ between men and women. We also provide additional insights into the genetic influences on multilayer connectivity changes that occur during aging. Our findings indicate that multilayer measures contain previously unknown information on the relationship between sex and age, opening up new avenues for research into functional brain connectivity in aging.

中文翻译：

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37543 名英国生物银行参与者在衰老过程中功能网络拓扑的性别差异

衰老是心血管和神经退行性疾病的主要危险因素，具有相当大的社会和经济影响。健康老龄化伴随着静息状态功能网络之间和内部连接性的变化，然而，对于性别对这些与年龄相关的变化的影响尚无共识。在这里，在 37543 名英国生物银行参与者的大型横截面样本中，我们表明，捕捉正负连接之间相互作用的多层测量提供了关于性别对网络拓扑中与年龄相关的变化的影响的关键信息，与认知、结构和心血管危险因素已被证明在男性和女性之间存在差异。我们还提供了有关遗传对衰老过程中发生的多层连通性变化的影响的更多见解。