Workshop 7

Brain blood flow and oxygen metabolism are vital for normal function in the mammalian nervous system, and provides the basis for functional neuroimaging. This presentation will discuss the results obtained in studies exploring the regulation of brain’s blood flow, oxygen and glucose consumption in defined networks in rodents. The presentation will focus on recent progress in our understanding of how neuronal signalling, and in turn information processing, impacts vascular regulation and oxygen metabolism in the rat primary somatosensory cortex and the cerebellum. The field is complex, requiring a multidisciplinary approach. Brief and local changes in brain blood flow and oxygen metabolism may be controlled by the same intracellular signalling mechanism related to the rapid Ca2+ rises that accompany neurotransmission in both preand postsynaptic cellular elements. The high level of energy consumption in the resting state is incompletely understood, but non-signalling house-keeping activities play a more important role than hitherto believed. The in vivo network approach to explore mechanisms of brain energy metabolism and blood flow appear to be particularly useful for detailed analysis of signalling and nonsignalling mechanisms in the working brain.