Perfusion and pulsatility techniques to study aerobic fitness effects on the brain

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Understanding what aerobic exercise does to the human brain has become a new frontier in the integrated field of neuroscience and exercise physiology. This proposal deals with the development of physiological techniques primarily focused on exploiting magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This technology will help in our understand of the relationship between the cardiovascular and the cerebrovascular systems, i.e. the heart and brain connection. The aims in this proposal are the following: 1) develop an MRI technique that characterizes cardiac pulsatility in the brain quantitatively through high temporal and spatial resolution imaging, 2) develop our mechanistic understanding on cerebrovascular reactivity, using a real world' paradigm that measures beat-by-beat blood flow velocities from intracranial arteries while participants are exercising aerobically, 3) test the theory that aerobic exercise is a physiological stressor that can exert a positive influence on brain activation patterns associated with performing a psychologically stressful fMRI task. Collectively, this research program exploits the exceptional spatial & temporal resolution available with MRI and will deliver new quantitative readouts that inform on the brain's blood vessels. I believe this research will lead to significant advances in the field of exercise physiology. Although the aims are directed at understanding the acute effects of exercise on the healthy adult brain, this research naturally lends itself to study vascular aging and life-long fitness effects that are thought to preserve brain health and cognitive abilities.