CAREER: Hemodynamic Mechanisms of Heart-Aorta-Brain Coupling with An Integrated Preventive Medicine Education Program for Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Groups

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

The human body works based on a delicate balance of blood flow dynamic between the heart, the aorta (the largest vessel extending from the heart), and other major organs like the brain. Understanding the interactions between the heart, aorta, and brain is a key step towards detecting and treating both heart disease (i.e., heart failure) and brain diseases (i.e., dementia). The goal of this CAREER project is to understand how the heart and the brain impact each other so that easy-to-use and cheap heart-brain monitoring devices can be developed for underserved communities. The educational part of this CAREER project is based on the “See One, Do One, Teach One” philosophy to encourage health monitoring and preventive medicine in low-income families. In addition, this CAREER award will generate a database that will benefit researchers in other fields such as artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine. Heart failure (HF) is a condition characterized by the inability of the heart to circulate blood in the vascular network. Epidemiological studies have shown that simply being a member of a socioeconomically disadvantaged community is an independent risk factor for both incident HF as well as increased hospital readmission for HF. Additionally, reducing the risk for the development of dementia is of the utmost importance due to the absence of effective treatments. As is the case with HF, lower socioeconomic status translates to higher prevalence of dementia. Understanding the complex fluid dynamic coupling (hemodynamic interactions) between the heart, aorta, and brain is a crucial step towards diagnostics and therapeutics of not only HF and dementia, but also other related diseases. The general hypothesis of this proposal is that wave dynamics in the aorta dominate the pulsatile hemodynamics of the heart, the brain, and the nonlinear interaction between the two. The investigator’s main goal is to elucidate systems-level effects of aortic hemodynamics on heart-brain interactions. In order to achieve this goal, the investigator will combine state-of-the-art experimentation, cutting-edge numerical simulation, and novel hybrid physics-informed machine learning approaches. Ultimately, the outcome of this research will facilitate improved understanding of the pathophysiological pathways in highly complex diseases such as HF, Alzheimer’s, and dementia. The long-term goal of this CAREER project is to develop diagnostic and monitoring devices for heart diseases and vascular brain damage. This project is jointly funded by the Engineering of Biomedical Systems and Fluid Dynamics programs of the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems in the Engineering Directorate and by the Mathematical Biology program of the Division of Mathematical Sciences in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.