BME PhD Preliminary Exam Announcement for Adam Wright (Y. Tong, advisor) Everyone is invited to attend the public presentation beginning at 1:00 PM. Title: Clinically feasible functional MRI providing independent assessments of cerebrovascular stiffness and microcirculation in typical aging and Alzheimer's Disease cohorts Date: August 13th Time: 1:00 PM Location: MJIS 1083 Advisory committee: Yunjie Tong, Chair; Vitaliy L. Rayz; Igor A. Fernandes; Qiuting Wen Abstract: With over 50 million people affected globally, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia. The progression of AD dementia is complex and involves multiple factors, with a notable decrease in cerebrovascular function linked to its development. Despite the importance of vascular health in AD prognosis, we lack adequate methods to assess the health of the brain’s blood vessels. To address these challenges, we will develop a non-invasive imaging tool using specialized processing on conventional resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) scans to measure cerebrovascular health, including vascular stiffness and microvascular health. These metrics will be measured in two large datasets: the Human Connectome Project (HCP) – Aging and the Indiana Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (IADRC). The HCP dataset, which includes over 700 participants aged 35 to 100 years, will provide insights into typical vascular aging. This will allow us to adjust for typical age-related changes when assessing the associations of cerebrovascular health with cognitive function across a spectrum of cognitive impairment in the IADRC dataset. The central hypothesis is that measures of vascular stiffness and microvascular function derived from specialized rs-fMRI image processing will significantly correlate with typical aging. After adjusting for typical aging, these measures are expected to significantly correlate with cognitive impairment within the spectrum of AD pathology. This study aims to develop non-invasive methods for measuring vascular stiffness and microvascular function in the brain, providing the potential to enhance our understanding of how vascular health impacts AD dementia.