Frels Andrew John, Nair Vidhya V, Kish Brianna, Riley Kalen, Mao Gordon, Schwichtenberg A J, Tong Yunjie
Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA.
Mayo Clinic Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2025 Jul;46(10):e70278. doi: 10.1002/hbm.70278.
In Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), the primary contrast is Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) signal. Systemic Low Frequency Oscillations (sLFO) are BOLD signals between 0.01 and 0.1 Hz originating from systemic physiological processes. While sLFO signals in the brain have been shown to travel with blood in numerous studies, their behavior in the spinal cord (SC) remains unexplored. This study characterizes the coupling between brain-sLFO and SC-sLFO signals. Understanding brain-SC-coupling is pivotal for unraveling the vascular continuity of the central nervous system, which plays a crucial role in SC-injury pathophysiology. BOLD signal extraction involved registering structural masks to fMRI space to obtain average time series from the brain, SC, and superior sagittal sinus. The sLFOs of the time series were cross-correlated to determine vascular delays and analyzed for band power. It is found that the SC-sLFO signal comprises two components relative to the brain, showing opposite correlation polarity and varying delays. These findings suggest that highly oxygenated blood arrives at the spinal cord before arriving at the brain, and some component of the brain's venous output circulates to or near to the spinal cord later, likely due to unique arterial and venous pathways connecting the central nervous system. This insight offers a valuable imaging marker for future studies on the effects of SC injury on brain-SC interconnectivity.
在功能磁共振成像(fMRI)中,主要的对比是血氧水平依赖(BOLD)信号。全身低频振荡(sLFO)是源自全身生理过程的0.01至0.1赫兹之间的BOLD信号。虽然在众多研究中已表明大脑中的sLFO信号随血液传播,但其在脊髓(SC)中的行为仍未得到探索。本研究对脑 - sLFO与脊髓 - sLFO信号之间的耦合进行了表征。了解脑 - 脊髓耦合对于揭示中枢神经系统的血管连续性至关重要,而中枢神经系统的血管连续性在脊髓损伤病理生理学中起着关键作用。BOLD信号提取包括将结构掩码配准到fMRI空间,以获取来自大脑、脊髓和上矢状窦的平均时间序列。对时间序列的sLFO进行互相关以确定血管延迟并分析频段功率。研究发现,相对于大脑,脊髓 - sLFO信号包含两个成分,显示出相反的相关极性和不同的延迟。这些发现表明,高氧血液在到达大脑之前先到达脊髓,大脑静脉输出的某些成分随后循环至脊髓或其附近,这可能是由于连接中枢神经系统的独特动静脉途径所致。这一见解为未来关于脊髓损伤对脑 - 脊髓互连性影响的研究提供了有价值的成像标志物。