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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurosci.
Sec. Brain Imaging Methods
Volume 18 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fnins.2024.1457732

Cardiovascular and vasomotor pulsations in the brain and periphery during awake and NREM sleep in a multimodal fMRI study

Provisionally accepted
Johanna Tuunanen Johanna Tuunanen 1*Heta Helakari Heta Helakari 1Niko Huotari Niko Huotari 1Tommi Väyrynen Tommi Väyrynen 1Matti Järvelä Matti Järvelä 1Janne Kananen Janne Kananen 1Annastiina Kivipää Annastiina Kivipää 1Lauri J. Raitamaa Lauri J. Raitamaa 1Seyed Mohsen Ebrahimi Seyed Mohsen Ebrahimi 1Mika A. Kallio Mika A. Kallio 2Johanna Piispala Johanna Piispala 2Vesa J. Kiviniemi Vesa J. Kiviniemi 1Vesa O. Korhonen Vesa O. Korhonen 2
  • 1 University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
  • 2 Oulu University Hospital, Oulu, Northern Ostrobothnia, Finland

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The cerebrospinal fluid dynamics in the human brain are driven by physiological pulsations, including cardiovascular pulses and very low-frequency (< 0.1 Hz) vasomotor waves. Ultrafast functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) facilitates the simultaneous measurement of these signals from venous and arterial compartments independently with both classical venous blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) and faster arterial spinphase contrast. In this study, we compared the interaction of these two pulsations in awake and sleep using fMRI and peripheral fingertip photoplethysmography in both arterial and venous signals in ten healthy subjects (5 female). Sleep increased the power of brain cardiovascular pulsations, decreased peripheral pulsation, and desynchronized them. However, vasomotor waves increase power and synchronicity in both brain and peripheral signals during sleep. Peculiarly, lag between brain and peripheral vasomotor signals reversed in sleep within the default mode network. Finally, sleep synchronized cerebral arterial vasomotor waves with venous BOLD waves within distinct parasagittal brain tissue. These changes in power and pulsation synchrony may reflect systemic sleep-related changes in vascular control between the periphery and brain vasculature, while the increased synchrony of arterial and venous compartments may reflect increased convection of regional neurofluids in parasagittal areas in sleep.

    Keywords: Sleep, cardiovascular pulsations, vasomotor pulsations, Heart rate variability, Ultrafast fMRI, Multimodal Imaging

    Received: 01 Jul 2024; Accepted: 25 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Tuunanen, Helakari, Huotari, Väyrynen, Järvelä, Kananen, Kivipää, Raitamaa, Ebrahimi, Kallio, Piispala, Kiviniemi and Korhonen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Johanna Tuunanen, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.