Abstract
BackgroundThe contribution of cerebrovascular function to cognitive performance is gaining increased attention. Transcranial doppler (TCD) is portable, reliable, inexpensive and extremely well tolerated by young and clinical samples. It enables measurement of blood flow velocity in major cerebral arteries at rest and during cognitive tasks.MethodsWe systematically reviewed evidence for associations between cognitive performance and cerebrovascular function in children (0-18 years), as measured using TCD. A total of 2778 articles were retrieved from PsychInfo, Pubmed, and EMBASE searches and 25 relevant articles were identified.ResultsMost studies investigated clinical groups, where decreased blood flow velocities in infants were associated with poor neurological functioning, and increased blood flow velocities in children with Sickle cell disease were typically associated with cognitive impairment and lower intelligence. Studies were also identified assessing autistic behaviour, mental retardation and sleep disordered breathing. In healthy children, the majority of studies reported cognitive processing produced lateralised changes in blood flow velocities however these physiological responses did not appear to correlate with behavioural cognitive performance.ConclusionPoor cognitive performance appears to be associated with decreased blood flow velocities in premature infants, and increased velocities in Sickle cell disease children using TCD methods. However knowledge in healthy samples is relatively limited. The technique is well tolerated by children, is portable and inexpensive. It therefore stands to make a valuable contribution to knowledge regarding the underlying functional biology of cognitive performance in childhood.
Highlights
The contribution of cerebrovascular function to cognitive performance is gaining increased attention
Cerebrovascular function in childhood has been investigated using a variety of techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography (PET) and
Given that the contribution of cerebrovascular function to cognition is important and that the technique is well suited to child populations, we aimed to systematically review the literature to assess how Transcranial doppler (TCD) measures relate to cognitive performance in childhood
Summary
The contribution of cerebrovascular function to cognitive performance is gaining increased attention. Transcranial doppler (TCD) is portable, reliable, inexpensive and extremely well tolerated by young and clinical samples It enables measurement of blood flow velocity in major cerebral arteries at rest and during cognitive tasks. Cerebrovascular function in childhood has been investigated using a variety of techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), positron emission tomography (PET) and Recently, Transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasonography has been increasingly employed as a non-invasive, inexpensive, safe and portable technique for measuring cerebrovascular function It permits continuous and bilateral recording of cerebral blood flow velocity through the major intracranial vessels (middle, anterior, posterior and basilar arteries), is relatively resistant to movement artefact, has good test-retest reliability [4], and is a suitable technique for child samples [3,4,6,7]. TCD data collected during cognitive operations is referred to as functional TCD (fTCD), and is a calculation of the average increase in blood flow velocity (over multiple trials) relative to a specific mental operation [9]
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