Age-Related Trajectories of Brain Structure–Function Coupling in Female Roller Derby Athletes

oleh: Derek C. Monroe, Samantha L. DuBois, Christopher K. Rhea, Donna M. Duffy

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-12-01

Deskripsi

Contact and collision sports are believed to accelerate brain aging. Postmortem studies of the human brain have implicated tau deposition in and around the perivascular space as a biomarker of an as yet poorly understood neurodegenerative process. Relatively little is known about the effects that collision sport participation has on the age-related trajectories of macroscale brain structure and function, particularly in female athletes. Diffusion MRI and resting-state functional MRI were obtained from female collision sport athletes (<i>n</i> = 19 roller derby (RD) players; 23–45 years old) and female control participants (<i>n</i> = 14; 20–49 years old) to quantify structural coupling (S<sub>C</sub>) and decoupling (S<sub>D</sub>). The novel and interesting finding is that RD athletes, but not controls, exhibited increasing S<sub>C</sub> with age in two association networks: the frontoparietal network, important for cognitive control, and default-mode network, a task-negative network (permuted <i>p</i> = 0.0006). Age-related increases in S<sub>C</sub> were also observed in sensorimotor networks (RD, controls) and age-related increases in S<sub>D</sub> were observed in association networks (controls) (permuted <i>p</i> ≤ 0.0001). These distinct patterns suggest that competing in RD results in compressed neuronal timescales in critical networks as a function of age and encourages the broader study of female athlete brains across the lifespan.