Brain Structural Preservation in Long-Lived Bats: An Epigenetic Investigation of textit{Rousettus aegyptiacus

Abstract: Age-related cognitive decline and brain atrophy are hallmarks of mammalian aging, yet long-lived species like the Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) exhibit exceptional resilience. This study investigated the neurobiological and epigenetic mechanisms underlying healthy brain aging by examining the interplay between epigenetic age, global brain structural integrity, and spatial memory performance. We leveraged a multi-modal dataset from 41 bats, encompassing DNA methylation-based epigenetic age, total brain volume derived from Diffusion Tensor Imaging, and detailed behavioral metrics from a spatial foraging paradigm. Due to unforeseen data processing challenges, the analysis of cognitive metrics was not feasible for this report. Consequently, the study focused solely on the relationship between epigenetic age and total brain volume (TBV) in a subset of 33 bats with complete imaging and epigenetic data, employing Ordinary Least Squares regression while controlling for sex and origin colony. Our analysis revealed no statistically significant association between epigenetic age and TBV (β = 0.0073, p = 0.968). This preliminary finding suggests that Rousettus aegyptiacus may exhibit remarkable preservation of global brain structure into advanced epigenetic age, potentially indicating a slower rate of age-related brain atrophy compared to other mammals. While these results offer novel insights into mechanisms of healthy brain aging, they should be interpreted with caution due to limitations including unanalyzed cognitive data and violations of statistical assumptions in the regression model, underscoring the critical need for future comprehensive investigations.

Subjects:	q-bio.NC; q-bio.QM
Cite as:	PX:2508.00035