Research Paper Volume 14, Issue 9 pp 3910—3920

Vascular function in the aging human brain during muscle exertion

class="figure-viewer-img"

Figure 4. Maximal voluntary muscle strength and brain hemodynamic fluctuation at higher ages. Both maximum handgrip strength (A) and lean body mass (B) of adults aged >50 y were moderately lower than their young age counterparts. BOV was low (<10) across a wide range of relative muscle strength (kg/lean mass in kg) among participants (C). Participants with high voluntary muscle strength shows mostly low BHV during maximal handgrip contraction (D), suggesting a low vascular compensating effort to limit oxygen fluctuation within a small range. *α < 0.05 compared against the young control adults (20–29 y). Abbreviations: SD: standard deviation of the 300 optical data in 30 sec; BOV: brain oxygenation variability; BHV: brain hemodynamic variability.