Rethinking cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) dynamics: a multimodal framework for brain network organization

The glymphatic system supports brain clearance through cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) circulation. Its proper functioning is increasingly recognized as essential for maintaining neural health. However, there is currently no standardized framework for quantifying CSF circulation and integrating it with functional connectivity, cerebral blood flow (CBF), and systemic variables, such as heart rate or respiration rate.

During Brainhack, we will develop and prototype a cross-species computational pipeline to quantify CSF temporal and spectral dynamics and model their interactions with brain functional network organization, cerebral blood flow, and systemic physiological signals.

To achieve this, we will try to integrate multimodal datasets from rats and humans, including ultrafast resting-state fMRI, high-resolution anatomical MRI, arterial spin labeling (ASL), and simultaneous physiological recordings (heart rate, respiration, temperature, ventilation).
We will construct whole-brain functional networks and quantify their topology using graph-theoretical metrics. We will apply Bayesian modeling to estimate coupling between CSF dynamics, BOLD activity, CBF, and systemic physiology.

Rather than treating CSF signals as “noise” in fMRI data, we will model them as structured physiological processes and evaluate how modulating CSF dynamics reshapes large-scale brain network organization.