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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Aging Neurosci.
Sec. Neurocognitive Aging and Behavior
Volume 16 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2024.1473178

Spontaneous blinking and brain health in aging: Large-scale evaluation of blink-related oscillations across the lifespan Authors

Provisionally accepted
Sujoy Ghosh Hajra Sujoy Ghosh Hajra 1Jed A Meltzer Jed A Meltzer 2Prerana Keerthi Prerana Keerthi 3Chloe Pappas Chloe Pappas 4Allison Sekuler Allison Sekuler 2Careesa Chang Liu Careesa Chang Liu 1*
  • 1 Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, United States
  • 2 Rotman Research Institute (RRI), Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 3 University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 4 McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Blink-related oscillations (BROs) are newly discovered neurophysiological brainwave responses associated with spontaneous blinking, and represent environmental monitoring and awareness processes as the brain evaluates new visual information appearing after eye reopening. BRO responses have been demonstrated in healthy young adults across multiple task states and are modulated by both task and environmental factors, but little is known about this phenomenon in aging. To address this, we undertook the first large-scale evaluation of BRO responses in healthy aging using the Cambridge Centre for Aging and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) repository, which contains magnetoencephalography (MEG) data from a large sample (N=457) of healthy adults across a broad age range (18-88) during the performance of a simple target detection task. The results showed that BRO responses were present in all age groups, and the associated effects exhibited significant age-related modulations comprising an increase in sensorlevel global field power (GFP) and source-level theta and alpha spectral power within the bilateral precuneus. Additionally, the extent of cortical activations also showed an inverted-U relationship with age, consistent with neurocompensation with aging. Crucially, these age-related differences were not observed in the behavioral measures of task performance such as reaction time and accuracy, suggesting that blink-related neural responses during the target detection task are more sensitive in capturing aging-related brain function changes compared to behavioral measures alone. Together, these results suggest that BRO responses are not only present throughout the adult lifespan, but the effects can also capture brain function changes in healthy aging -thus providing a simple yet powerful avenue for evaluating brain health in aging.

    Keywords: Aging, Blinking, neurophysiology and brainwaves, blink-related oscillations (BROs), Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Precuneus

    Received: 30 Jul 2024; Accepted: 25 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ghosh Hajra, Meltzer, Keerthi, Pappas, Sekuler and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Careesa Chang Liu, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.