Moderate-intensity cycling for 20 minutes resulted in tissue-specific and voxel-wise BOLD pulsatility decreases 20 minutes following exercise cessation in healthy adolescents.
Observational (n=45)
Does acute moderate-intensity exercise alter cerebrovascular BOLD pulsatility in healthy adolescents?
Cardiac-related BOLD pulsatility mapping is a robust method for assessing cerebrovascular pulsatility, which decreases following acute exercise in healthy adolescents.
Arterial stiffness is linked to cerebral small vessel damage and neurodegeneration, but barriers to accessing deep cerebrovascular anatomy limit our ability to assess the brain. This study describes an adaptation of a cardiac-related scrubbing method as a means of generating blood oxygenation level-dependent pulsatility maps based on the cardiac cycle. We examine BOLD pulsatility at rest, based on the non-parametric deviation from null metric, as well as changes following acute physiological stress from 20 min of moderate-intensity cycling in 45 healthy adolescents. We evaluate the influence of repetition time (TR) and echo time (TE) using simulated and multi-echo empirical data, respectively. There were tissue-specific and voxel-wise BOLD pulsatility decreases 20 min following exercise cessation. BOLD pulsatility detection was comparable over a range of TR and TE values when scan volumes were kept constant; however, short TRs (≤500 ms) and TEs (∼14 ms) acquisitions would yield the most efficient detection. Results suggest cardiac-related BOLD pulsatility may represent a robust and easily adopted method of mapping cerebrovascular pulsatility with voxel-wise resolution.
Theyers et al. (Wed,) conducted a observational in Healthy adolescents (n=45). Moderate-intensity cycling vs. Rest (baseline) was evaluated on BOLD pulsatility changes. Moderate-intensity cycling for 20 minutes resulted in tissue-specific and voxel-wise BOLD pulsatility decreases 20 minutes following exercise cessation in healthy adolescents.