Could Transcranial Doppler be used to demonstrate cognitive impairment?

Hoopoe

Hoopoe

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Measuring cerebral bloow flow with Transcranial Doppler while performing a high-intensity cognitive task (without pauses) while sitting seems like it might be a useful test.

I believe it would show that blood flow continues to decline with exertion as the brain becomes fatigued and metabolism declines.

As far as I know this specific test hasn't been done yet, but there was a study that did repeated cognitive testing during PEM, which found a decline in performance over time.

Transcranial Doppler has already been used in ME/CFS to show a decline in cerebral blood flow in severely ill patients undergoing some orthostatic stress (I can't recall the details at the moment).
 
Yes I was thinking about that study. They used tilt tests to provoke reduced cerebral blood flow, and in another study severely ill patients showed reduced cerebral blood flow just by sitting up, if I recall correctly.

If we could provoke and document reduced cerebral blood flow by having patients do a cognitively demanding task while wearing a Transcranial Doppler headband we would have a widely usable diagnostic test for at least that aspect of ME/CFS. The cognitively demanding task could be just a cognitive test in front of a PC.

Assuming that a cognitive test actually results in CBF abnormalities (in comparison to healthy people). I suspect it does.
 
Last edited:
 
SNT Gatchaman said:
Psychopathological Symptom Load and Distinguishable Cerebral Blood Flow Velocity Patterns in Patients With Schizophrenia and Healthy Controls: A Functional Transcranial Doppler Study (2021, Frontiers in Psychiatry)
Click to expand...

This study suggests that this idea has merit, at least in schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia demonstrated slower speeds of processing during both the TMT-A and TMT-B. The speed of processing deteriorated with increasing psychopathological symptom load, additionally a distinct cerebral hemodynamic pattern in the MCA was observed. Our results further support the view that severity of schizophrenia, particularly psychopathological symptom load, influences performance in neurocognitive tasks and is related to distinct patterns of brain hemodynamics.
Click to expand...
 
Ken Turnbull said:
@Hoopoe , I'm only new today, but happened to see this thread. I think a similar study to what you are thinking of has been done on POTS patients in 2020:

"Cerebral Blood Flow and Cognitive Performance in Postural Tachycardia Syndrome: Insights from Sustained Cognitive Stress Test"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7955388/
Click to expand...

Thread here:
Cerebral Blood Flow and Cognitive Performance in Postural Tachycardia Syndrome: Insights from Sustained Cognitive Stress Test, Wells et al, 2020
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom