Coupled pulsatile vascular and paravascular fluid dynamics in the human brain

Cardiac pulsation propels blood through the cerebrovascular network to maintain cerebral homeostasis. The cerebrovascular network is uniquely surrounded by paravascular cerebrospinal fluid (pCSF), which plays a crucial role in waste removal, and its flow is suspected to be driven by arterial pulsations. Despite its importance, the relationship between vascular and paravascular fluid dynamics throughout the cardiac cycle remains poorly understood in humans. In this study, we developed a non-invasive neuroimaging approach to investigate the coupling between pulsatile vascular and pCSF dynamics within the subarachnoid space of the human brain. Resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) and dynamic diffusion-weighted imaging (dynDWI) were retrospectively cardiac-aligned to represent cerebral hemodynamics and pCSF motion, respectively. We measured the time between peaks (∆TTP) in $$\frac{d}{d\phi }fMRI$$ and dynDWI waveforms and measured their coupling by calculating the waveforms correlation after peak alignment (correlation at aligned peaks). We compared the ∆TTP and correlation at aligned peaks between younger [mean age: 27.9 (3.3) years, n = 9] and older adults [mean age: 70.5 (6.6) years, n = 20], and assessed their reproducibility within subjects and across different imaging protocols. Hemodynamic changes consistently precede pCSF motion. ∆TTP was significantly shorter in younger adults compared to older adults (−0.015 vs. −0.069, p < 0.05). The correlation at aligned peaks were high and did not differ between younger and older adults (0.833 vs. 0.776, p = 0.153). The ∆TTP and correlation at aligned peaks were robust across fMRI protocols (∆TTP: −0.15 vs. −0.053, p = 0.239; correlation at aligned peaks: 0.813 vs. 0.812, p = 0.985) and demonstrated good to excellent within-subject reproducibility (∆TTP: intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.36; correlation at aligned peaks: intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.89). This study proposes a non-invasive technique to evaluate vascular and paravascular fluid dynamics. Our findings reveal a consistent and robust cardiac pulsation-driven coupling between cerebral hemodynamics and pCSF dynamics in both younger and older adults.