Resting state connectivity has been increasingly studied to investigate the effects of aging on the brain. A reduced organization
in the communication between brain areas was demonstrated b
y combining a variety of different imaging technologies (fMRI,
EEG, and MEG) and graph theory. In this paper, we propose a methodology to get new insights into resting state connectivity and
its variations with age, by combining advanced techniques of effective connectivity estimation, graph theoretical approach, and
classification by SVM method. We analyzed high density EEG signal
srecordedatrestfrom71healthysubjects(age:20โ63years).
Weighted and directed connectivity was computed by means of Partial Directed Coherence based on a General Linear Kalman filter
approach. To keep the information collected by the estimator, weighted and directed graph indices were extracted from the resulting
networks. A relation between brain network properties and age of the subject was found, indicating a tendency of the network to
randomly organize increasing with age. This result is also confirmed dividing the whole population into two subgroups according
to the age (young and middle-aged adults): significant differences exist in terms of network organization measures. Classification
of the subjects by means of such indices returns an accuracy greater than 80