What this means
Neural activity continuously changes over time, yet how these changes relate to cognitive states and disease remains unclear. We modeled EEG activity as distributions of short-term activity patterns and quantified distributional changes using Wasserstein distance.
A plain-English summary is on its way. Until then, this is the start of the authors' own summary.
- Who it was tested in
- Not stated
- Kind of research
- A study
The science
- Original title
- Neural representations expand with aging but collapse in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease.
- Authors
- Yu J, Zhang J, Pei Z et al.
- Journal
- Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology
- Published
- Oct 23, 2026
- Study type
- Study
- PMID
- 42914629 ↗
Abstract
Background
Neural activity continuously changes over time, yet how these changes relate to cognitive states and disease remains unclear. A geometric perspective on neural representations provides a complementary approach for characterizing cognitive states and brain dynamics across aging and disease.
What they did
We modeled EEG activity as distributions of short-term activity patterns and quantified distributional changes using Wasserstein distance. Intrinsic dimensionality was estimated to characterize representational complexity and its association with these changes.
What they found
Across multi-task, lifespan, and clinical EEG datasets, higher intrinsic dimensionality was consistently associated with greater distributional changes. Healthy aging showed increased dimensionality and modestly increased displacement, whereas mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease showed reduced dimensionality and displacement, indicating distinct alterations in representational geometry. Cognitive aging and impairment are associated with distinct alterations in the geometry of neural representations.
The authors' abstract, grouped under plain headings from its own section labels.
Yu J, Zhang J, Pei Z et al. Neural representations expand with aging but collapse in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease. Clinical neurophysiology : official journal of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. 2026. doi:10.1016/j.clinph.2026.2112412. PMID: 42914629. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42914629/