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See how the brain wobbles with each heartbeat in incredible new videos - Livescience.com
May 11, 2021 1 min, 39 secs

New, incredibly detailed videos capture how the brain jiggles inside the skull as blood and other fluids flow through the squidgy organ.

In two new studies, published May 5 in the journals Brain Multiphysics and Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, scientists employed a brain-scanning technique often used to capture static, 2D images of organs to instead create 3D videos of the brain moving in real-time.

The new videos "amplify" this motion in the brain, exaggerating the movement so it can be easily analyzed.

The new scanning technique could someday prove useful in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions in which fluids get blocked from flowing through the brain.

One such condition is hydrocephalus, in which excess fluid builds up in the cavities of the brain, said Samantha Holdsworth, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, research director at Mātai, a New Zealand research center with a focus on medical imaging, and co-author on both studies.

To create the new scanning technique, the team started with basic MRI, which uses strong magnets to apply a magnetic field to the body.

By applying multiple magnetic fields to the body, MRI can also be used to create 3D images, which can be viewed from multiple angles, Live Science previously reported. .

However, at first, aMRI could only be used to track motion within a single plane — for example, as viewed from the side or the top of the brain, but not from several angles at once, Holdsworth said.

"It might be crucial from a diagnostic perspective" to be able to evaluate the motion from all angles, he said.

Several other MRI techniques can also be used to track motion in the brain — namely, Displacement Encoding with Stimulated Echoes (DENSE) and phase-contrast MRI, Holdsworth said.

Her group also plans to study whether aMRI could be used to indirectly measure pressure in the brain, because currently, the direct measurement requires drilling a small hole in the skull, Holdsworth said. 

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