Yunjie Tong
Purdue University, IN·Neuroscience
Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is the clear fluid that bathes the brain and spinal cord. Its movement is thought to wash metabolic waste out of the brain, mostly during sleep, through what is called the glymphatic system.
- Fields
Neuroscience
Biomedical Engineering
Physiology
- Topics
cerebrospinal fluid
glymphatic system
sleep
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Measure how strongly changes in cerebral blood volume, the amount of blood in the brain, are coupled to cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) movement during both wake and sleep states.
- Determine the relative contribution of breathing oscillations to fluctuations in cerebral blood volume and in CSF flow, comparing wakefulness and sleep.
- Quantify sleep-coupled CSF movement, which is thought to support glymphatic clearance of the amyloid-beta and tau proteins that accumulate in Alzheimer's disease.
More about the research
In Alzheimer's disease, amyloid-beta and tau proteins build up, and this buildup may partly reflect poor waste clearance. Sleep problems are also common in the disease. Still, little is known about how CSF movement could be improved to slow the disease.
Why it matters
Millions of Americans live with Alzheimer's disease. The grant argues that improving CSF circulation could slow the disease and prolong a higher quality of life. If breathing patterns or blood-flow oscillations prove to drive CSF movement, simple approaches such as guided breathing or sleep-focused interventions might eventually be developed to help the brain clear the proteins linked to the disease.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joseph Quinn
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Neuroscience
Collect and provide DNA, plasma, peripheral blood mononuclear cells and cerebrospinal fluid from healthy controls, people with mild cognitive impairment and people with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
Aditya Raghunandan
University of Michigan-Dearborn, MI·Biomedical Engineering
Build a microphysiological system on a validated silicon-nitride membrane tissue-chip platform with independent dual-chamber flow control, to recreate perivascular flow from healthy steady conditions to the high pulsatility of aging and hypertension.
Tracy A. Butler
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Neuroscience
Confirm, using additional complementary measurement methods, the preliminary finding that traumatic brain injury reduces brain cerebrospinal and interstitial fluid clearance, including the glymphatic pathway, in patients imaged within 14 days of injury.
The school
Purdue University: 43 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 833 research doctorates a year.
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