Neural Noise

Editorial: Neuroimaging of the aging brain

3 min read

  • A Frontiers editorial provides an overview of neuroimaging of the aging brain.1
  • Watchlist context for neuroimaging themes; no electrophysiology or BCI, tier-2.1 1

Weekly enrichment (2026-07-20)

  • The editorial (Front. Neuroimaging, Clinical Neuroimaging section, published 14 November 2025; DOI 10.3389/fnimg.2025.1724972) was written by Owen T. Carmichael (Pennington Biomedical Research Center) with Danielle Harvey and Evan Fletcher (University of California, Davis).2
  • It introduces the “Neuroimaging of the Aging Brain” Research Topic, which collected 17 articles and has drawn about 61,000 views; the editors argue aging-brain imaging remains critical despite anti-amyloid drugs, PET eligibility scans, safety MRIs, and emerging blood-based biomarkers.23
  • On the prevention side the editorial cites U.S. POINTER (Baker et al., JAMA 2025) and the 2024 Lancet standing Commission (Livingston et al.), which showed multicomponent lifestyle interventions can slow cognitive decline in people at elevated dementia risk.245
  • Highlighted lifestyle-mechanism findings: Smith et al. linked greater cardiorespiratory fitness to better white-matter integrity in specific axon tracts, and Karavasilis et al. tied higher Mediterranean-diet adherence to resting-state functional connectivity that correlated with cognition only in high-adherence participants.2
  • Several functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) studies — a noninvasive optical modality relevant to wearable neurotech — feature: Lu et al. found visual-task activation shifted from unilateral in young to bilateral in older adults (dedifferentiation/compensation), and Ćurčić-Blake et al. found “blue zone” Okinawans showed less task activation at equal performance, hinting at greater neural efficiency.2
  • A vascular-aging thread runs through the collection: Mohammadi et al. used phase-contrast MRI plus NIRS to link interhemispheric cerebral pulsatility-index differences to Stroop-evoked oxyhemoglobin changes, and Zeng et al. reported elevated pulsatility with reduced wall shear stress and neurovascular coupling in cerebral small vessel disease.2
  • Thammasart et al. found lower relative cerebral blood flow inside white-matter hyperintensity lesions (largest reductions near the ventricles), with lower baseline rCBF in lesions that grew over 2 years; Zhang J. et al. found reduced interhemispheric functional connectivity (VMHC) after basal-ganglia ischemic stroke.2
  • Beyond Alzheimer’s disease, the editorial covers less-understood conditions: Binswanger’s disease with MCI (reduced network connectivity), multiple system atrophy (18F-FDG PET hypometabolism in right superior frontal gyrus and superior parietal lobule classifying cognitive impairment), and AD heterogeneity tied to white-matter hyperintensities.2
  • BCI relevance is indirect: the piece is centered on MRI/PET/fNIRS of aging rather than electrophysiology or brain-computer interfaces, so its value here is as watchlist context on noninvasive imaging biomarkers and cerebrovascular safety themes.2

Footnotes

  1. https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMilAFBVV95cUxOYWZaQV81aU96LUVHVHpwZFpyQ0FQTmhWbTkwR2ppVndsSUxFSFNJT3RfYThSLXl3OHhhZldFUjhPZ2lVRUF1dGJXMEVHOHBPZWI3MEtaQjF5V2tXUGtvNzlBNHFma1cxX1A2RFlzYlRCS3pKWlJDTGJkQW13R1RJZlhkRGVQaTRfTy1Lc2VBTWV1cjI5?oc=5 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroimaging/articles/10.3389/fnimg.2025.1724972/full ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9

  3. https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/63100/neuroimaging-of-the-aging-brain ↩

  4. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2025.12923 ↩

  5. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01296-0 ↩

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