The relationship between changes in deoxy Hb and body composition before and after cycling exercise during unilateral lower extremity occlusion.

[Purpose] To clarify the relationship between changes in deoxygenated hemoglobin level due to cycling exercise and body composition in healthy participants with unilateral lower-limb obstruction. [Participants and Methods] The height, weight, body mass index, and body composition (skeletal muscle mass, body water content, and body fat percentage) of nine healthy males were measured along with the anaerobic threshold. The protocol consisted of 7 minutes of rest followed by 4 minutes of cycling exercise (anaerobic threshold level) with unilateral lower extremity occlusion. After exercise, ischemia was released, and the participants was allowed rest for 5 minutes. Deoxygenated hemoglobin levels before and after the exercise and the relationship between the level of variation and each index were examined. [Results] Body water content and skeletal muscle mass showed a significant negative correlation with changes in deoxygenated hemoglobin level; however, no correlation was found for the other indices. Body water content and skeletal muscle mass were found to be significantly positively correlated. they showed a significant positive correlation with deoxygenated hemoglobin levels. [Conclusion] Our study indicates that body water content and skeletal muscle mass play a significant role in the recovery of blood flow following exercise.

Montmorency Tart cherries (Prunus cerasus L.) modulate vascular function acutely, in the absence of improvement in cognitive performance.

Cerebral blood volume and metabolism of oxygen decline as part of human ageing, and this has been previously shown to be related to cognitive decline. There is some evidence to suggest that polyphenol-rich foods can play an important role in delaying the onset or halting the progression of age-related health disorders such as CVD and Alzheimer's disease and to improve cognitive function. In the present study, an acute, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, cross-over, randomised Latin-square design study with a washout period of at least 14 d was conducted on twenty-seven, middle-aged (defined as 45-60 years) volunteers. Participants received either a 60 ml dose of Montmorency tart cherry concentrate (MC), which contained 68·0 (sd 0·26) mg cyanidin-3-glucoside/l, 160·75 (sd 0·55) mean gallic acid equivalent/l and 0·59 (sd 0·02) mean Trolox equivalent/l, respectively, or a placebo. Cerebrovascular responses, cognitive performance and blood pressure were assessed at baseline and 1, 2, 3 and 5 h following consumption. There were significant differences in concentrations of total Hb and oxygenated Hb during the task period 1 h after MC consumption (P≤0·05). Furthermore, MC consumption significantly lowered systolic blood pressure (P≤0·05) over a period of 3 h, with peak reductions of 6±2 mmHg at 1 h after MC consumption relative to the placebo. Cognitive function and mood were not affected. These results show that a single dose of MC concentrate can modulate certain variables of vascular function; however, this does not translate to improvements in cognition or mood.

Influence of blood flow occlusion on the development of peripheral and central fatigue during small muscle mass handgrip exercise.

Critical power represents an important threshold for neuromuscular fatigue development and may, therefore, dictate intensities for which exercise tolerance is determined by the magnitude of fatigue accrued. Peripheral fatigue appears to be constant across O2 delivery conditions for large muscle mass exercise, but this consistency is equivocal for smaller muscle mass exercise. We sought to determine the influence of blood flow occlusion during handgrip exercise on neuromuscular fatigue development and to examine the relationship between neuromuscular fatigue development and W '. Blood flow occlusion influenced the development of both peripheral and central fatigue, thus providing further evidence that the magnitude of peripheral fatigue is not constant across O2 delivery conditions for small muscle mass exercise. W ' appears to be related to the magnitude of fatigue accrued during exercise, which may explain the reported consistency of intramuscular metabolic perturbations and work performed for severe-intensity exercise. The influence of the muscle metabolic milieu on peripheral and central fatigue is currently unclear. Moreover, the relationships between peripheral and central fatigue and the curvature constant (W ') have not been investigated. Six men (age: 25 ± 4 years, body mass: 82 ± 10 kg, height: 179 ± 4 cm) completed four constant power handgrip tests to exhaustion under conditions of control exercise (Con), blood flow occlusion exercise (Occ), Con with 5 min post-exercise blood flow occlusion (Con + Occ), and Occ with 5 min post-exercise blood flow occlusion (Occ + Occ). Neuromuscular fatigue measurements and W ' were obtained for each subject. Each trial resulted in significant peripheral and central fatigue. Significantly greater peripheral (79.7 ± 5.1% vs. 22.7 ± 6.0%) and central (42.6 ± 3.9% vs. 4.9 ± 2.0%) fatigue occurred for Occ than for Con. In addition, significantly greater peripheral (83.0 ± 4.2% vs. 69.0 ± 6.2%) and central (65.5 ± 14.6% vs. 18.6 ± 4.1%) fatigue occurred for Occ + Occ than for Con + Occ. W ' was significantly related to the magnitude of global (r = 0.91) and peripheral (r = 0.83) fatigue. The current findings demonstrate that blood flow occlusion exacerbated the development of both peripheral and central fatigue and that post-exercise blood flow occlusion prevented the recovery of both peripheral and central fatigue. Moreover, the current findings suggest that W ' may be determined by the magnitude of fatigue accrued during exercise.

The effects of chronic trans-resveratrol supplementation on aspects of cognitive function, mood, sleep, health and cerebral blood flow in healthy, young humans.

Single doses of resveratrol have previously been shown to increase cerebral blood flow (CBF) with no clear effect on cognitive function or mood in healthy adults. Chronic resveratrol consumption may increase the poor bioavailability of resveratrol or otherwise potentiate its psychological effects. In this randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-groups study, a total of sixty adults aged between 18 and 30 years received either placebo or resveratrol for 28 d. On the 1st and 28th day of treatment, the performance of cognitively demanding tasks (serial subtractions, rapid visual information processing and 3-Back) (n 41 complete data sets) was assessed, alongside blood pressure (n 26) and acute (near-IR spectroscopy (NIRS)) and chronic (transcranial Doppler) measures of CBF (n 46). Subjective mood, sleep quality and health questionnaires were completed at weekly intervals (n 53/54). The results showed that the cognitive effects of resveratrol on day 1 were restricted to more accurate but slower serial subtraction task performance. The only cognitive finding on day 28 was a beneficial effect of resveratrol on the accuracy of the 3-Back task before treatment consumption. Subjective ratings of 'fatigue' were significantly lower across the entire 28 d in the resveratrol condition. Resveratrol also resulted in modulation of CBF parameters on day 1, as assessed by NIRS, and significantly increased diastolic blood pressure on day 28. Levels of resveratrol metabolites were significantly higher both before and after the day's treatment on day 28, in comparison with day 1. These results confirm the acute CBF effects of resveratrol and the lack of interpretable cognitive effects.

Functional connectivity of the cortex of term and preterm infants and infants with Down's syndrome.

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) imaging studies have revealed the functional development of the human brain in early infancy. By measuring spontaneous fluctuations in cerebral blood oxygenation with NIRS, we can examine the developmental status of the functional connectivity of networks in the cortex. However, it has not been clarified whether premature delivery and/or chromosomal abnormalities affect the development of the functional connectivity of the cortex. In the current study, we investigated the spontaneous brain activity of sleeping infants who were admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit at term age. We classified them into the 3 following infant groups: (i) term-or-late-preterm, (ii) early-preterm, and (iii) Down's syndrome (DS). We used multichannel NIRS to measure the spontaneous changes in oxygenated hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (deoxy-Hb) at 10 measurement channels, which covered the frontal, temporal, and occipital regions. In order to reveal the functional connectivity of the cortical networks, we calculated the temporal correlations of the time-course signals among all of the pairs of measurement channels. The functional connectivity was classified into the 4 following types: (i) short-range, (ii) contralateral-transverse, (iii) ipsilateral-longitudinal, and (iv) control. In order to examine whether the local properties of hemodynamics reflected any pathological conditions, we calculated the phase differences between the oxy- and deoxy-Hb time-course signals in the 3 groups. The statistical analyses of the functional connectivity data showed main effects of group and the types of connectivity. For the group effect, the mean functional connectivity of the infants in the term-or-late-preterm group did not differ from that in the early-preterm group, and the mean functional connectivity of the infants in the DS group was lower than that in the other 2 groups. For the effect of types of connectivity, short-range connectivity was highest compared to any of the other types of connectivity, and the second highest connectivity was the contralateral-transverse one. The phase differences between the oxy- and deoxy-Hb changes showed that there were significant differences between the DS group and the other 2 groups. Our findings suggested that the development of the functional connectivity of cortical networks did not differ between term-or-late-preterm infants and early-preterm infants around term-equivalent ages, while DS infants had alterations in their functional connectivity development and local hemodynamics at term age. The highest short-range connectivity and the second highest contralateral-transverse connectivity suggested that the precursors for the basic cortical networks of functional connectivity were present at term age.

Genetic influences on prefrontal activation during a verbal fluency task in adults: a twin study based on multichannel near-infrared spectroscopy.

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) studies have reported that prefrontal hemodynamic dysfunction during executive function tasks may be a promising biomarker of psychiatric disorders, because its portability and noninvasiveness allow easy measurements in clinical settings. Here, we investigated the degree to which prefrontal NIRS signals are genetically determined. Using a 52-channel NIRS system, we monitored the oxy-hemoglobin (oxy-Hb) signal changes in 38 adult pairs of right-handed monozygotic (MZ) twins and 13 pairs of same-sex right-handed dizygotic (DZ) twins during a letter version of the verbal fluency task. Heritability was estimated based on a classical twin paradigm using structured equation modeling. Significant genetic influences were estimated in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and left frontal pole. The degrees of heritability were 66% and 75% in the variances, respectively. This implies that the prefrontal hemodynamic dysfunction observed during an executive function task measured by NIRS may be an efficient endophenotype for large-scale imaging genetic studies in psychiatric disorders.

Relationship between psychosocial stress-induced prefrontal cortex activity and gut microbiota in healthy Participants-A functional near-infrared spectroscopy study.

Brain and gut microbes communicate in a bidirectional manner with each affecting a person's response to psychosocial stress. Although human studies demonstrated that the intake of probiotics can alter stress-related behavior in both patients and healthy participants, the association between stress-related brain functions and the gut microbiota has mostly been investigated in patients with depression. However, the response to psychosocial stress differs, even among healthy individuals, and elucidating the natural state of the gut microbiota would broaden the understanding of responses to psychosocial stress. We investigated the relationship between psychosocial stress response in the prefrontal cortex and the abundance of gut microbes in healthy male participants. The participants were exposed to psychosocial stress during a task while brain activation data were recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. The heart rate and subjective stress were recorded, and fecal samples were collected. The stressful condition was accompanied by high subjective stress, high heart rate, and higher prefrontal activation in the right pre-motor cortex/supplementary motor area, right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, right frontal pole, and right inferior prefrontal gyrus. The psychosocial stress response in the prefrontal cortex was also associated with changes in the gut microbiota abundance. The abundance of Alistipes, Clostridium IV, Clostridium XI, Faecalibacterium, and Blautia in healthy participants who had high psychosocial stress resembled that noted in patients with depression. These results suggest that the gut microbiota differs, among healthy participants, depending on the psychosocial stress response. We believe that this study is the first to report a direct relationship between brain function and the gut microbiota in healthy participants, and our findings would shed a new light on this field in the near future.

Hemodynamic signals in fNIRS.

Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was originally designed for clinical monitoring of tissue oxygenation, and it has also been developed into a useful tool in neuroimaging studies, with the so-called functional NIRS (fNIRS). With NIRS, cerebral activation is detected by measuring the cerebral hemoglobin (Hb), where however, the precise correlation between NIRS signal and neural activity remains to be fully understood. This can in part be attributed to the situation that NIRS signals are inherently subject to contamination by signals arising from extracerebral tissue. In recent years, several approaches have been investigated to distinguish between NIRS signals originating in cerebral tissue and signals originating in extracerebral tissue. Selective measurements of cerebral Hb will enable a further evolution of fNIRS. This chapter is divided into six sections: first a summary of the basic theory of NIRS, NIRS signals arising in the activated areas, correlations between NIRS signals and fMRI signals, correlations between NIRS signals and neural activities, and the influence of a variety of extracerebral tissue on NIRS signals and approaches to this issue are reviewed. Finally, future prospects of fNIRS are described.