The Relationship Between M in "Calibrated fMRI" and the Physiologic Modulators of fMRI

Cortical laminar resting-state signal fluctuations scale with the hypercapnic blood oxygenation level-dependent response

Calibrated functional magnetic resonance imaging can remove unwanted sources of signal variability in the blood oxygenation level‐dependent (BOLD) response. This is achieved by scaling, using information from a perfusion‐sensitive scan during a purely vascular challenge, typically induced by a gas manipulation or a breath‐hold task. In this work, we seek for a validation of the use of the resting‐state fluctuation amplitude (RSFA) as a scaling factor to remove vascular contributions from the BOLD response. Given the peculiarity of depth‐dependent vascularization in gray matter, BOLD and vascular space occupancy (VASO) data were acquired at submillimeter resolution and averaged across cortical laminae. RSFA from the primary motor cortex was, thus, compared to the amplitude of hypercapnia‐induced signal changes (tSD_hc) and with the M factor of the Davis model on a laminar level. High linear correlations were observed for RSFA and tSD_hc (R² = 0.92 ± 0.06) and somewhat reduced for RSFA and M (R² = 0.62 ± 0.19). Laminar profiles of RSFA‐normalized BOLD signal changes yielded good agreement with corresponding VASO profiles. Overall, this suggests that RSFA contains strong vascular components and is also modulated by baseline quantities contained in the M factor. We conclude that RSFA may replace the scaling factor tSD_hc for normalizing the laminar BOLD response.

Improving the Assessment of Breath-Holding Induced Cerebral Vascular Reactivity Using a Multiband Multi-echo ASL/BOLD Sequence

Breath holding (BH) is a viable vasodilatory stimulus for calculating functional MRI-derived cerebral vascular reactivity (CVR). The BH technique suffers from reduced repeatability compared with gas inhalation techniques; however, extra equipment is needed to perform gas inhalation techniques, and this equipment is not available at all institutions. This study aimed to determine the sensitivity and repeatability of BH activation and CVR using a multiband multi-echo simultaneous arterial spin labelling/blood oxygenation level dependent (ASL/BOLD) sequence. Whole-brain images were acquired in 14 volunteers. Ten subjects returned for repeat imaging. Each subject performed four cycles of 16 s BH on expiration interleaved with paced breathing. Following standard preprocessing, the echoes were combined using a T2*-weighted approach. BOLD and ASL BH activation was computed, and CVR was then determined as the percent signal change related to the activation. The "M" parameter from the Davis Model was also computed by incorporating the ASL signal. Our results showed higher BH activation strength, volume, and repeatability for the combined multi-echo (MEC) data compared with the single-echo data. MEC CVR also had higher repeatability, sensitivity, specificity, and reliability compared with the single-echo BOLD data. These data support the usefulness of an MBME ASL/BOLD acquisition for BH CVR and M measurements.

Functional MRI of brain physiology in aging and neurodegenerative diseases

Brain aging and associated neurodegeneration constitute a major societal challenge as well as one for the neuroimaging community. A full understanding of the physiological mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration still eludes medical researchers, fuelling the development of in vivo neuroimaging markers. Hence it is increasingly recognized that our understanding of neurodegenerative processes likely will depend upon the available information provided by imaging techniques. At the same time, the imaging techniques are often developed in response to the desire to observe certain physiological processes. In this context, functional MRI (fMRI), which has for decades provided information on neuronal activity, has evolved into a large family of techniques well suited for in vivo observations of brain physiology. Given the rapid technical advances in fMRI in recent years, this review aims to summarize the physiological basis of fMRI observations in healthy aging as well as in age-related neurodegeneration. This review focuses on in-vivo human brain imaging studies in this review and on disease features that can be imaged using fMRI methods. In addition to providing detailed literature summaries, this review also discusses future directions in the study of brain physiology using fMRI in the clinical setting.

Searching for a truly "iso-metabolic" gas challenge in physiological MRI

Hypercapnia challenge (e.g. inhalation of CO2) has been used in calibrated fMRI as well as in the mapping of vascular reactivity in cerebrovascular diseases. An important assumption underlying these measurements is that CO2 is a pure vascular challenge but does not alter neural activity. However, recent reports have suggested that CO2 inhalation may suppress neural activity and brain metabolic rate. Therefore, the goal of this study is to propose and test a gas challenge that is truly "iso-metabolic," by adding a hypoxic component to the hypercapnic challenge, since hypoxia has been shown to enhance cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2). Measurement of global CMRO2 under various gas challenge conditions revealed that, while hypercapnia (P = 0.002) and hypoxia (P = 0.002) individually altered CMRO2 (by -7.6 ± 1.7% and 16.7 ± 4.1%, respectively), inhalation of hypercapnic-hypoxia gas (5% CO2/13% O2) did not change brain metabolism (CMRO2 change: 1.5 ± 3.9%, P = 0.92). Moreover, cerebral blood flow response to the hypercapnic-hypoxia challenge (in terms of % change per mmHg CO2 change) was even greater than that to hypercapnia alone (P = 0.007). Findings in this study suggest that hypercapnic-hypoxia gas challenge may be a useful maneuver in physiological MRI as it preserves vasodilatory response yet does not alter brain metabolism.

Developmental trajectories of cerebral blood flow and oxidative metabolism at baseline and during working memory tasks

The neurobiological interpretation of developmental BOLD fMRI findings remains difficult due to the confounding issues of potentially varied baseline of brain function and varied strength of neurovascular coupling across age groups. The central theme of the present research is to study the development of brain function and neuronal activity through in vivo assessments of cerebral blood flow (CBF), oxygen extraction fraction (OEF) and cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (CMRO2) both at baseline and during the performance of a working memory task in a cohort of typically developing children aged 7 to 18years. Using a suite of 4 emerging MRI technologies including MR blood oximetry, phase-contrast MRI, pseudo-continuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) perfusion MRI and concurrent CBF/BOLD fMRI, we found: 1) At baseline, both global CBF and CMRO2 showed an age related decline while global OEF was stable across the age group; 2) During the working memory task, neither BOLD nor CBF responses showed significant variations with age in the activated fronto-parietal brain regions. Nevertheless, detailed voxel-wise analyses revealed sub-regions within the activated fronto-parietal regions that show significant decline of fractional CMRO2 responses with age. These findings suggest that the brain may become more "energy efficient" with age during development.