Normal aging and brain functional connectivity of primary motor cortex: a functional MRI (fMRI) study

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques and image processing tools have been applied to investigate the effects of normal aging on brain functional connectivity of primary motor cortex. Task activation and resting state fMRI time series images of healthy young and elderly subjects were collected, and then activation and connectivity maps were constructed for the two age groups. Preliminary results tend to suggest that primary motor cortex functional connectivity is not altered by normal aging. Work is in progress to refine image post-processing algorithms and to study more subjects.