Abstract #0026

Neural activity induces repeatable subarachnoid CSF flow responses with coherent spatial pathways: a concurrent 4D CSF flow and BOLD fMRI study

Fuyixue Wang^1,2, Timothy G. Reese^1,2, Bruce R. Rosen^1,2,3, Lawrence L. Wald^1,2,3, Laura D. Lewis^1,2,4, Jonathan R. Polimeni^1,2,3, and Zijing Dong^1,2

¹Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States, ²Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ³Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ⁴Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States

Synopsis

Keywords: Neurofluids, Neurofluids

Motivation: How neural activity influences subarachnoid-CSF flow remains poorly understood.

Goal(s): To investigate subarachnoid-CSF flow responses to neural-activity-induced hemodynamic responses, including temporal properties, test-retest repeatability, and spatial patterns.

Approach: We employed our newly developed slow-flow-sensitized EPTI sequence which provides concurrent 4D-CSF-flowmetry and BOLD-fMRI, to map visual-task-induced subarachnoid-CSF flow. We conducted slow-flow phantom experiments for validation, and performed in-vivo test-retest experiments across runs/subjects.

Results: The slow-flow phantom measurement agrees well with true flow rates. In-vivo experiments show strong neural-activation-evoked subarachnoid-CSF flow that is highly correlated with dBOLD/dt, and directional spatial flow-patterns around cortex with coherence pathways aligning with anatomical curvature, which are also highly reproducible.

Impact: We demonstrate that neural-activation-related hemodynamic responses induce significant directional subarachnoid-CSF flow. Test-retest experiments showed that the spatial patterns and flow pathways are reproducible across runs and subjects. These findings suggest that brain activity can effectively modulate subarachnoid-CSF flow.

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