Sleep-wake transitions studied in terms of brain wave coordination: effects of healthy aging

Recently, a new paradigm of network interactions of physiologically relevant cortical rhythms has been proposed, revealing different classes of interaction patterns that coexist during a given physiological state and are reorganized during transitions between physiological states. It has been shown that physiological states cannot be fully described by focusing only on individual rhythms, and continuous coordination between brain rhythms as a complex network underlies physiological function. Based on this paradigm, we study age-related differences in cross-communication of brain rhythms during sleep-wake transitions. We show that such differences are more pronounced during wakefulness.