Metabolic complexity in the human brain supports metastable network dynamics and declines in normative ageing

In 84 adults, higher PET-derived multiscale entropy of cerebral glucose is linked to greater network metastability and is lower in older versus younger participants.

• Why it matters: It was unclear whether entropy-based complexity in brain signals extends to the temporal dynamics of metabolic activity and how metabolic entropy relates to network organization, ageing, and cognition.
• What they did: Using dynamic functional PET with 18F-fluoroedeoxyglucose alongside simultaneous fMRI, the study computed multiscale entropy for metabolic (glucodynamics) and hemodynamic signals and tested links to network dynamics, cortical measures, and cognition.
• The result: Metabolic complexity correlated with cortical thickness and CMRglc/CBF and showed associations with cognitive performance, but these were largely explained by age; hemodynamic MSE was not significantly tied to network dynamics.

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