Scientists triggered the flow of spinal fluid in the waking brain

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A new study finds that the waves of cerebrospinal fluid that normally bathe the brain during sleep can be made to pulse in the brains of people who are awake.

clear liquid may Harmful waste disposalsuch as the sticky proteins that accumulate in Alzheimer’s disease (SN: 7/15/18). So, being able to control the flow of fluid in the brain may one day have implications for treating certain brain disorders.

“I think so [finding] It will help with many neurological disorders,” says Jonathan Kipnis, a neuroscientist at Washington University in St. Louis who was not involved in the study. “Think Formula One. You can have the best car and driver, but without a great maintenance team, that driver isn’t going to win the race.” The flow of spinal fluid in the brain is a key part of the maintenance crew, he says. But he and other researchers, including study authors, caution that any potential therapeutic applications still elusive.

In 2019, neuroscientist Laura Lewis of Boston University and her colleagues reported this Powerful waves of cerebrospinal fluid flow through our brains while we sleepsuggesting that one of sleep’s underappreciated roles may be giving the brain a deep clean (SN: 10/31/19). The team showed that the slow neural oscillations that characterize deep, non-REM sleep occur at a steady pace with cerebrospinal fluid waves through the brain.

“If you drop your clothes in a water bath, eventually the dirt will come out. But if you move them back and forth, things move more effectively,” Lewis says. “That’s the analogy I’m thinking of.”

These outflows were far greater than the small, regular effects that one’s breathing and heartbeat had on the cerebrospinal fluid.

Researchers believe that because brain activity during sleep causes blood to flow through the brain—carrying oxygen to energy-hungry cells—cerebrospinal fluid flows behind the blood to maintain constant pressure within the skull.

In the new study, “The first question we wanted to answer was, ‘Can you manipulate [blood flow] enough to drive too [fluid] Flowing when someone is awake? says Stephanie Williams, a neuroscientist also at Boston University.

To stimulate cerebral blood flow, Williams, Lewis, and colleagues showed a faint checkerboard pattern to six healthy adults. A combination of tapping techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging and electrodes, confirmed that this intense visual stimulation affected blood flow in the brain and allowed the team to see the order of events.

Neural activity increased when the blinking pattern was triggered, followed by increased blood flow. The outflow of cerebrospinal fluid is inhibited with increased blood flow and Then it rushes to the brain as blood flow subsides When the stimulation stopped, he informed the team on March 30 Biology PLUS. Longer stimulation produced greater cerebrospinal fluid inflows, suggesting that it is possible to maximize the response.

The researchers found that the effect of brain activity on cerebrospinal fluid flow was separate from the effects of heartbeat and breathing. “An interesting biological insight that emerges from this is that the brain has a way of controlling its own fluid flow,” Lewis says.

It was not measured whether any waste products were removed from the awakened brain. Previous studies in mice have found that certain auditory and visual stimuli reduce levels of toxic proteins linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Clinical trials are testing whether this technology works in people.

“It’s a nice study, but I wouldn’t draw therapeutic conclusions from this,” says Stephen Goldman, MD, a neurologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York who was not involved in the work. He says that the fluid flow system in the brain is optimally configured for cleaning during sleep. “It would be more effective just to ensure a good night’s sleep,” he says. “Any more manipulation than that is best employed while sleeping.”

The researchers acknowledge that the spinal fluid flows they generated were not as large as those seen during sleep. “We didn’t succeed in recreating the sleep itself, but it was really a fundamental change in the flow,” Lewis says.

She says the team plans to study links between the flow of spinal fluid in the brain and diseases such as Alzheimer’s. “In disorders where fluid flow is involved, as seems to be the case with Alzheimer’s disease, this [technique] Hopefully it will give us a handle on understanding where this is coming from, what process is crashing? “

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