Grant: Project Grant

An association has been established between vascular disorders, such as, hypertension (high blood pressure), elevated cholesterol levels, atherosclerosis and cognitive impairments, and also between cardiovascular risk factors and white matter lesions. Understanding how the brain deteriorates in these diseases or if cardiovascular diseases contribute to this deterioration is essential to help clinicians identify adequate therapy or develop new therapies so that both heart and mind are preserved with aging. Evidence point to white matter, the brain highway, as a contributor to this decline due to its role in transporting information from one region of the brain to another. While there are many observations showing that white matter is disrupted in cardiovascular diseases, we do not know how or if the vascular aspect of the disease is causing these changes. This investigation aims to study whether vascular disease has a causal impact on white matter changes that are observed and how it proceeds, both in terms of pathway and spatial origin in the brain.