Calibrated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provides a noninvasive technique to assess functional metabolic changes associated with normal aging. We simultaneously measured both the magnitude of the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) responses in the visual cortex for separate conditions of mild hypercapnia (5% CO 2 ) and a simple checkerboard stimulus in healthy younger (n = 10, mean: 28-years-old) and older (n = 10, mean: 53-years-old) adults. From these data we derived baseline CBF, the BOLD scaling parameter M, the fractional change in the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (CMRO 2 ) with activation, and the coupling ratio n of the fractional changes in CBF and CMRO 2 . For the functional activation paradigm, the magnitude of the BOLD response was significantly lower for the older group (0.57 ± 0.07%) compared to the younger group (0.95 ± 0.14%), despite the finding that the fractional CBF and CMRO 2 changes were similar for both groups. The weaker BOLD response for the older group was due to a reduction in the parameter M, which was significantly lower for older (4.6 ± 0.4%) than younger subjects (6.5 ± 0.8%), most likely reflecting a reduction in baseline CBF for older (41.7 ± 4.8 mL/100 mL/min) compared to younger (59.6 ± 9.1 mL/100 mL/min) subjects. In addition to these primary responses, for both groups the BOLD response exhibited a post-stimulus undershoot with no significant difference in this magnitude. However, the post-undershoot period of the CBF response was significantly greater for older compared to younger subjects. We conclude that when comparing two populations, the BOLD response can provide misleading reflections of underlying physiological changes. A calibrated approach provides a more quantitative reflection of underlying metabolic changes than the BOLD response alone. Keywordsaging; functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) effect; cerebral blood flow (CBF); cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO 2 ); visual cortex
Although functional MRI (fMRI) based on blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) signal changes is a sensitive tool for mapping brain activation, quantitative studies of the physiological effects of pharmacological agents using fMRI alone are difficult to interpret due to the complexities inherent in the BOLD response. Hypercapnia calibrated-BOLD methodology is potentially a more powerful physiological probe of brain function, providing measures of the changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF) and the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO 2 ). In this study, we implemented a quantitative R 2 * approach for assessing the BOLD response to improve the stability of repeated measurements, in combination with the calibrated-BOLD method, to examine the CBF and CMRO 2 responses to caffeine ingestion. Ten regular caffeine consumers were imaged before and after a 200mg caffeine dose. A dual echo arterial spin labeling technique was used to measure CBF and BOLD responses to visual stimulation, caffeine consumption and mild hypercapnia. For a region of interest defined by CBF activation to the visual stimulus, the results were: hypercapnia increased CBF (+46.6%, ±11.3, mean and standard error), visual stimulation increased both CBF (+47.9%, ±2.9) and CMRO 2 (+20.7%, ±1.4), and caffeine decreased CBF (-34.5%, ±2.6) with a non-significant change in CMRO 2 (+5.2%, ±6.4). The coupling between CBF and CMRO 2 was significantly different in response to visual stimulation compared to caffeine consumption. A calibrated-BOLD methodology using R 2 * is a promising approach for evaluating CBF and CMRO 2 changes in response to pharmacological interventions. Keywordsfunctional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI); blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD); cerebral blood flow (CBF); cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2); calibrated-BOLD; caffeine
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) based on blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal changes is a sensitive tool for mapping brain activation, but quantitative interpretation of the BOLD response is problematic. The BOLD response is primarily driven by cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes, but is moderated by M, a scaling parameter reflecting baseline deoxyhemoglobin, and n, the ratio of fractional changes in CBF to cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (CMRO(2)). We compared M and n between cortical (visual cortex, VC) and subcortical (lentiform nuclei, LN) regions using a quantitative approach based on calibrating the BOLD response with a hypercapnia experiment. Although M was similar in both regions (~5.8%), differences in n (2.21+/-0.03 in VC and 1.58+/-0.03 in LN; Cohen d=1.71) produced substantially weaker (~3.7x) subcortical than cortical BOLD responses relative to CMRO(2) changes. Because of this strong sensitivity to n, BOLD response amplitudes cannot be interpreted as a quantitative reflection of underlying metabolic changes, particularly when comparing cortical and subcortical regions.
Resting cerebral blood flow (rCBF) using arterial spin labeling MRI has the potential to be a noninvasive neuroimaging biomarker for assessing HIV in the brain. rCBF reductions that occur soon after seroconversion possibly reflect neuronal or vascular injury among HIV+ individuals not yet expressing neuropsychological impairment.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of the medial temporal lobe have primarily made use of the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) response to neural activity. The interpretation of the BOLD signal as a measure of medial temporal lobe function can be complicated, however, by changes in the cerebrovascular system that can occur with both normal aging and age-related diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. Quantitative measures of the functional cerebral blood flow (CBF) response offer a useful complement to BOLD measures and have been shown to aid in the interpretation of fMRI studies. Despite these potential advantages, the application of ASL to fMRI studies of cognitive tasks and at-risk populations has been limited. In this study, we demonstrate the application of ASL fMRI to obtain measures of the CBF and BOLD responses to the encoding of natural scenes in healthy young (mean 25 years) and elderly (mean 74 years) adults. The percent CBF increase in the medial temporal lobe was significantly higher in the older adults, whereas the CBF levels during baseline and task conditions and during a separate resting-state scan were significantly lower in the older group. The older adults also showed slightly higher values for the BOLD response amplitude and the absolute change in CBF, but the age group differences were not significant. The percent CBF and BOLD responses are consistent with an age-related increase in the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen metabolism (CMRO(2)) response to memory encoding.
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