![]() Neural activity increased when the flashing pattern was turned on, followed by increased blood flow. ![]() A mix of eavesdropping techniques, including fMRI and electrodes, confirmed that this intense visual stimulation affected brain blood flow and allowed the team to see the order of events. To stimulate blood flow in the brain, Williams, Lewis and their colleagues showed a flickering checkerboard pattern to six healthy adults. In the new study, “the first question we wanted to answer is, can you manipulate enough to also drive flow when someone’s awake?” says Stephanie Williams, a neuroscientist also at Boston University. The researchers think that as brain activity during sleep causes blood to flow through the brain - bringing oxygen to power-hungry cells - the spinal fluid flows in behind the blood to maintain constant pressure inside the skull. These flows were far larger than the small, rhythmic influences that one’s breathing and heartbeat have on spinal fluid. But if you swish them back and forth, things are moving much more effectively,” Lewis says. ![]() “If you drop your clothes in a bath of water, eventually dirt will come out. And the team showed that the slow neural oscillations that characterize deep, non-REM sleep occur in lockstep with the waves of spinal fluid through the brain. In 2019, neuroscientist Laura Lewis of Boston University and colleagues reported that strong waves of cerebrospinal fluid wash through our brains while we slumber, suggesting that one unappreciated role of sleep may be to give the brain a deep clean ( SN: 10/31/19). ![]()
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