By means of cerebral autoregulation, the body is able to deliver sufficient blood containing oxygen and nutrients to the brain tissue for this metabolic need, and remove CO2 and other waste products.
This regulation of cerebral blood flow is achieved primarily by small arteries, arterioles, which either dilate or contract under the influence of multiple complex physiological control systems.
Impairment of these systems may occur e.g. following stroke, trauma or anaesthesia, in premature babies and has been implicated in the development of subsequent brain injury.
Much remains unknown about the physiology of blood flow control and the best clinical interventions to optimize patient outcome.
The effect of transmural blood pressure changes is directly detected by the vascular smooth muscle in arterioles, probably via a stress sensing mechanism.
Evoked blood pressure changes can be the result of: The quantification depends on the experimental setup and can involve methods such as regression, cross-correlation, transfer function analysis or fitting mathematical models.