Investigating Transient Patterns of Human Brain Activity in Normal Ageing
Abstract
The global population is ageing rapidly, and with the increasing population age,
comes an increasing need to understand the neurophysiological effects of ageing. Human
brain activity consists of a complex combination of spontaneous transient bursts of neural
activity with varying spatial and temporal characteristics. The characteristics of these
transient bursts change during task performance and normal ageing in ways that can
inform about the underlying neurophysiology. This thesis investigates the spatiotemporal
characteristics and cortical sources of typical and atypical transient bursts in a large
cohort of healthy participants and relates the findings to participant age. The thesis is
comprised of three projects, each of which introduces and validates novel methods for
investigating transient patterns of human brain activity in normal ageing.