Study outline of this study (IMAGE) Science China Press Caption This study conducted this study on two cross-ethnicity community cohorts, PRECISE and MAS. This study began by performing white matter fiber tracking on DWI imaging data and constructing brain structural networks consisting of 246 nodes based on Brainnetome brain parcellation. Subsequently, this study applied k-shell decomposition to the structural networks of the brain and ranked network nodes based on their centrality. Next, this study systematically removed nodes from the brain structural network in descending order of importance. This study concurrently assessed changes in the size of the largest connected component of the network during the removal process. This study quantitatively measured BTR using the area under the curve of the node removal process. Finally, this study conducted correlation analyses between BTR and age, VRF scores, AS scores, and cognition. This study also employed SEM to construct a path analysis to investigate the supportive role of BTR in cognition during aging. Credit ©Science China Press Usage Restrictions Use with credit. License Original content Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.