Brain functional connectivity in regions with cortical thinning linked to healthy aging (Dissertation)

This dissertation was written for the completion of my M.Sc. in Physics Applied to Medicine and Biology, under the ever productive supervision of Prof. Carlos E. G. Salmon at the University of São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. A special thanks to Professors Gabriela Castellano (IFGW - Unicamp), Koichi Sameshima (FM - USP) and João R. Sato (NINA, CMCC - UFABC) for accepting my invitation to compose my dissertation defense committee.

The main motivation behind this work was the fact that, while the literature on brain aging is very comprehensive on the main effects of age on the brain, co-occurrence or interactions between effects are often less studied.

Parts of this dissertation were modified and subsequently published:

• A principled multivariate intersubject analysis of Generalized Partial Directed Coherence with Dirichlet Regression: application to healthy aging in areas exhibiting cortical thinning, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, 1 January 2019
• Evidence of regional associations between age-related inter-individual differences in resting-state functional connectivity and cortical thinning revealed through a multi-level analysis, NeuroImage, 1 May 2020
• Sublinear association between cortical thickness at the onset of the adult lifespan and age-related annual atrophy parallels spatial patterns of laminar organization in the adult cerebral cortex, NeuroImage: Reports, 1 May 2021