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. 2025 Apr;28(4):891-901.
doi: 10.1038/s41593-025-01907-4. Epub 2025 Apr 3.

Human lifespan changes in the brain's functional connectome

Lianglong Sun  1   2   3 Tengda Zhao  1   2   3 Xinyuan Liang  1   2   3 Mingrui Xia  1   2   3 Qiongling Li  1   2   3 Xuhong Liao  4 Gaolang Gong  1   2   3   5 Qian Wang  1   2   3 Chenxuan Pang  1   2   3 Qian Yu  1   2   3 Yanchao Bi  1   2   3   5 Pindong Chen  6 Rui Chen  1 Yuan Chen  7 Taolin Chen  8   9 Jingliang Cheng  7 Yuqi Cheng  10 Zaixu Cui  5 Zhengjia Dai  1   2   3 Yao Deng  1 Yuyin Ding  1 Qi Dong  1 Dingna Duan  1   2   3 Jia-Hong Gao  11   12   13 Qiyong Gong  8   9 Ying Han  14 Zaizhu Han  1   3 Chu-Chung Huang  15 Ruiwang Huang  1   3 Ran Huo  16 Lingjiang Li  17   18 Ching-Po Lin  19   20   21 Qixiang Lin  1   2   3 Bangshan Liu  17   18 Chao Liu  1   3 Ningyu Liu  1 Ying Liu  16 Yong Liu  22 Jing Lu  1 Leilei Ma  1 Weiwei Men  11   12 Shaozheng Qin  1   2   3   5 Jiang Qiu  23   24 Shijun Qiu  25 Tianmei Si  26 Shuping Tan  27 Yanqing Tang  28 Sha Tao  1 Dawei Wang  29 Fei Wang  28 Jiali Wang  1 Pan Wang  30 Xiaoqin Wang  23   24 Yanpei Wang  1 Dongtao Wei  23   24 Yankun Wu  26 Peng Xie  31   32 Xiufeng Xu  10 Yuehua Xu  1   2   3 Zhilei Xu  1   2   3 Liyuan Yang  1   2   3 Huishu Yuan  16 Zilong Zeng  1   2   3 Haibo Zhang  1 Xi Zhang  33 Gai Zhao  1 Yanting Zheng  25 Suyu Zhong  22 Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging InitiativeDIDA-MDD Working GroupMCADIYong He  34   35   36   37
Collaborators, Affiliations

Human lifespan changes in the brain's functional connectome

Lianglong Sun et al. Nat Neurosci. 2025 Apr.

Abstract

Functional connectivity of the human brain changes through life. Here, we assemble task-free functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging data from 33,250 individuals at 32 weeks of postmenstrual age to 80 years from 132 global sites. We report critical inflection points in the nonlinear growth curves of the global mean and variance of the connectome, peaking in the late fourth and late third decades of life, respectively. After constructing a fine-grained, lifespan-wide suite of system-level brain atlases, we show distinct maturation timelines for functional segregation within different systems. Lifespan growth of regional connectivity is organized along a spatiotemporal cortical axis, transitioning from primary sensorimotor regions to higher-order association regions. These findings elucidate the lifespan evolution of the functional connectome and can serve as a normative reference for quantifying individual variation in development, aging and neuropsychiatric disorders.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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