The brain doesn’t just think. It moves, subtly pulsing with every heartbeat. Now, scientists from New Zealand and across the globe are exploring how these tiny movements and fluid shifts may hold the key to understanding brain health, ageing, and disease.
These ideas were the focus of the interdisciplinary Royal Society Pulsing Brain meeting, recently co-chaired by Associate Professor Samantha Holdsworth (Mātai & University of Auckland) in Brighton, UK.
The outcomes of that landmark meeting have just been published as a special issue of Interface Focus, the Royal Society’s premier interdisciplinary journal, featuring five major contributions from Mātai, the University of Auckland, GE HealthCare, Ghent University, and international collaborators.
This research redefines what we know about the living, moving brain and opens up exciting possibilities for diagnosing and treating neurological conditions.
This video reveals the brain in motion pulsing with each heartbeat, made visible through amplified MRI (aMRI), which magnifies brain tissue movement by 25 times. Combined with advanced techniques like 4D flow MRI (capturing blood and cerebrospinal fluid movement) and computational modelling, these approaches open exciting new frontiers in understanding brain motion, fluid dynamics, and their connection to health, disease, and ageing. By capturing these subtle movements non-invasively, we may revolutionise how brain conditions are diagnosed, monitored, and understood.
Introductory papers – The Pulsing Brain: part 1
Introductory paper – The Pulsing Brain: part 2
A comprehensive review of interdisciplinary methods to assess brain dynamics
How exercise modulates brain motion and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow
Amplified MRI and dynamic mode decomposition to visualise brain pulsations dynamically
Pulse wave velocity in the brain as a marker for vascular health