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Reductions in brain blood flow are the earliest biomarker of cognitive decline and neurodegeneration. Brain perfusion declines during normal ageing (Christie et al. 2022) and animal research shows that during normal cognition, some regions of the brain do not receive enough oxygen (Beinlich et al. 2024). I believe oxygen is the rate-limiting factor for neuronal computation.

While much of my previous work has focused on how astrocytes regulate oxygen homeostasis in the brain, my future work will be focused on translational imaging methods. I intend to quantify when oxygen insufficiency occurs in middle age and ask why and when this becomes problematic for cognition. I aim to generate a better understanding of the underlying physiology detected by hyperpolarised xenon in the brain. Since a gas contrast agent is used, I propose that this method could shed light on changes in gas exchange in the brain that occur during ageing.

The physiological sensitivity of the method is unclear, so my research also hopes to assess the sensitivity of hyperpolarised xenon to changes in brain blood flow and gas exchange.