Investigating metabolic, vascular and structural neuroplasticity in healthy and diseased brain using advanced neuroimaging techniques

Patitucci, Eleonora 2021. Investigating metabolic, vascular and structural neuroplasticity in healthy and diseased brain using advanced neuroimaging techniques. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

The brain’s lifelong capacity for reorganization is termed ‘plasticity’. It relies on molecular signalling translated into long lasting modifications. MRI has been widely used to assess neuroplasticity in vivo, showing brain’s ability to undergo functional and structural reorganization. However, there is a lack of understanding of the physiological events supporting neuroplasticity and advanced MRI techniques could help in the investigation of the biological meaning of these events and their alterations during neuroinflammation. This thesis has two main aims. Neuroscientifically, it aims to better understand mechanisms supporting neuroplasticity in the healthy and diseased brain. Methodologically, it aims to explore new MRI approaches to the study of neuroplasticity. The early experiments investigate the mechanisms underlying long-term neuroplasticity in MS. The studies then aim to elucidate the changes in brain energetics underlying adaptation in healthy and MS brain using calibrated fMRI. I explored new approaches to analyse the relative oxygen consumption during task adaptation in the same population. A new task to study short-term neuroplasticity was validated and used to demonstrate changes in resting blood flow after task execution. The same task was used to investigate the relationship between GM myelination and functional activity during task execution. Overall, we show the feasibility of using quantitative methods to study neuroplasticity, encouraging their application to improve biological interpretation in imaging studies. Our results highlight the importance of studying the brain as a network and the advantages of integrating different MRI modalities. We also show that our methods are applicable to MS populations, despite the observed metabolic impairment with neuroinflammation. Our methods may, in future, contribute to the study of disease progression and to the development of targeted interventions to limit the damage of inflammation.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Psychology
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Funders:	Wellcome Trust
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	6 July 2021
Date of Acceptance:	6 July 2021
Last Modified:	07 Jul 2021 15:14
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/142423

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