Premium
Integrative physiological and computational approaches to understand autonomic control of cerebral autoregulation
Author(s) -
Tan Can Ozan,
Taylor J. Andrew
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
experimental physiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.925
H-Index - 101
eISSN - 1469-445X
pISSN - 0958-0670
DOI - 10.1113/expphysiol.2013.072355
Subject(s) - cerebral autoregulation , autoregulation , cerebral blood flow , neuroscience , blood pressure , cerebral circulation , medicine , psychology , cardiology
New Findings• What is the topic of this review? This review focuses on the autonomic control of the cerebral vasculature in health and disease from an integrative physiological and computational perspective. • What advances does it highlight? This review highlights recent studies exploring autonomic effectors of cerebral autoregulation as well as recent advances in experimental and analytical approaches to understand cerebral autoregulation.The brain requires steady delivery of oxygen and glucose, without which neurodegeneration occurs within minutes. Thus, the ability of the cerebral vasculature to maintain relatively steady blood flow in the face of changing systemic pressure, i.e. cerebral autoregulation, is critical to neurophysiological health. Although the study of autoregulation dates to the early 20th century, only the recent availability of cerebral blood flow measures with high temporal resolution has allowed rapid, beat‐by‐beat measurements to explore the characteristics and mechanisms of autoregulation. These explorations have been further enhanced by the ability to apply sophisticated computational approaches that exploit the large amounts of data that can be acquired. These advances have led to unique insights. For example, recent studies have revealed characteristic time scales wherein cerebral autoregulation is most active, as well as specific regions wherein autonomic mechanisms are prepotent. However, given that effective cerebral autoregulation against pressure fluctuations results in relatively unchanging flow despite changing pressure, estimating the pressure–flow relationship can be limited by the error inherent in computational models of autoregulatory function. This review focuses on the autonomic neural control of the cerebral vasculature in health and disease from an integrative physiological perspective. It also provides a critical overview of the current analytical approaches to understand cerebral autoregulation.