NSF Award
2232598
Exercise is a form of physical activity and is a link between brain health and body health. The health benefits of exercise and physical activity are well established. During most physical activities, the head moves. Flowing deep inside the brain, the cerebrospinal fluid performs many irreplaceable tasks that are critical to the functioning of the brain. Volume transmission of the cerebrospinal fluid flow, for instance, could help regulate brain functions, such as the circadian rhythm and certain neuroendocrine responses. Because Americans spend a large amount of their time on daily activities, there is a need to gain a better understanding of cerebrospinal fluid dynamics with the head in motion. This exploratory project is designed to address the knowledge gap. The hypothesis is that ventricular cerebrospinal fluid flow physics is impacted by the head motion. If the concept and the technical approach are proven valid and accurate by the results of this project, they could enable studies to link biofluid dynamics toward an understanding of the roles the cerebrospinal fluid dynamics plays in the health benefit of exercises. <br/><br/>A medical image-based approach will be developed in this project to examine the effects of head motion on the cerebrospinal fluid dynamics in the brain. The approach uses an advanced in vivo MRI medical technology that can track unsteady cerebrospinal fluid flow in a brain in motion and uses in silico computational fluid dynamics simulation for in-depth investigation of the resulting cerebrospinal fluid dynamics. Anatomically and physiologically correct modeling of the brain based on MRI images are developed. Simulation results and MRI data are examined to unveil crucial fluid dynamics, such as how flow disturbances generated by the head motions grow and decay and how the convective mixing of the CSF flow varies with the head motions. This approach is expected to yield an in-depth and fundamental understanding of the responses of ventricular cerebrospinal flow dynamics to the head motions. The knowledge, which currently does not exist, could help shed lights on connections between the neurological fluid dynamics and the health benefits of exercise. For a broader impact, the knowledge discovered could potentially lead to insights on brain disorders and injury, such as concussion and traumatic brain injury.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
