Brief visual oddball events evoke CSF flow in the spinal canal

In 70 adults aged 19–76, brief visual oddball events can provoke measurable cerebrospinal fluid flow in the spinal canal at the foramen magnum.

• Why it matters: CSF flow is linked to glymphatic clearance, which has been increasingly tied to cognitive aging and neurodegenerative disease, but spinal-canal measurements have lacked automated, high-confidence methods.
• What they did: The authors automatically identified the spinal canal without manual tracing, then measured CSF flow using multi-echo acquisition to separate BOLD-like from non-BOLD-like components plus physiological regression to improve signal-to-noise.
• The result: CSF flow correlated with decreases in BOLD activity in these 70 adults, and salient visual oddballs (button press required) reliably evoked CSF flow, enabling event-linked assessment of spinal clearance dynamics.

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