Age-related brain changes affect sleep and are reflected in properties of sleep slow-waves, however, the precise mechanisms behind these changes are still not completely understood. Here, we adapt a previously established whole-brain model relating structural connectivity changes to resting state dynamics, and extend it to a slow-wave sleep brain state. In particular, starting from a representative connectome at the beginning of the aging trajectory, we have gradually reduced the inter-hemispheric connections, and simulated sleep-like slow-wave activity. We show that the main empirically observed trends, namely a decrease in duration and increase in variability of the slow waves are captured by the model. Furthermore, comparing the simulated EEG activity to the source signals, we suggest that the empirically observed decrease in amplitude of the slow waves is caused by the decrease in synchrony between brain regions.

Central European Institute of Technology Masaryk University Brno 62500 Czech Republic

Computational Neurology Group Ruhr University Bochum Bochum 44801 Germany

Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences University of Pavia Pavia 27100 Italy

Department of Engineering Università Campus Bio Medico di Roma Rome 00128 Italy

Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen Bonn 53127 Germany

DREEM Paris 75003 France

Faculty of Medicine University of Bonn Bonn 53115 Germany

Institute of Neuroscience Saclay 91400 France

Natl Center for Radiation Protection and Computational Physics Istituto Superiore di Sanità Rome 00161 Italy

Research Center Enrico Fermi Rome 00184 Italy

Roma Tre University of Rome Rome 00146 Italy

Tor Vergata University of Rome Rome 00133 Italy

Univ Rennes INSERM Rennes 35043 France

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