The influence of cardiovascular fitness and ventilatory efficiency on fMRI assessed cerebrovascular reactivity in older adults

This work suggests that cardiovascular fitness is associated with cortical CVR, however, the strength and direction of this relationship may depend largely on the vascular beds being measured. Considering the complex array of physiological mechanisms contributing to BOLD-CVR (I.e., endothelial, glial, mitochondrial function) future studies using multi-modal CVR assessment can further inform the specificity of neural and vascular-based CVR adaptations in the aging brain.