Anesthesia and the Quantitative Evaluation of Neurovascular Coupling

• Published in: Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism Vol. 32; no. 7; pp. 1233 - 1247
• Main Authors: Masamoto, Kazuto, Kanno, Iwao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.07.2012; Nature Publishing Group; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Anesthesia; Anesthesia - adverse effects; Anesthetics; Anesthetics - pharmacology; Animals; Attention; Biological and medical sciences; Blood-Brain Barrier - drug effects; Blood-Brain Barrier - physiology; Brain - drug effects; Brain - physiology; Cerebral blood flow; Cerebrovascular Circulation - drug effects; Cerebrovascular Circulation - physiology; Decision making; Degenerative and inherited degenerative diseases of the nervous system. Leukodystrophies. Prion diseases; Excitability; Hemodynamics - drug effects; Hemodynamics - physiology; Humans; Information processing; Medical sciences; Neuroimaging; Neurology; Neurotransmission; Review; Reviews; Vascular diseases and vascular malformations of the nervous system; Vasoactive agents; Vasodilation; animal models; awake experiments; neuroimaging; Animal model; Nervous system diseases; Central nervous system disease; Cerebrovascular disease; Cerebral disorder
• ISSN: 0271-678X; 1559-7016; 1559-7016
• DOI: 10.1038/jcbfm.2012.50

Anesthesia has broad actions that include changing neuronal excitability, vascular reactivity, and other baseline physiologies and eventually modifies the neurovascular coupling relationship. Here, we review the effects of anesthesia on the spatial propagation, temporal dynamics, and quantitative relationship between the neural and vascular responses to cortical stimulation. Previous studies have shown that the onset latency of evoked cerebral blood flow (CBF) changes is relatively consistent across anesthesia conditions compared with variations in the time-to-peak. This finding indicates that the mechanism of vasodilation onset is less dependent on anesthesia interference, while vasodilation dynamics are subject to this interference. The quantitative coupling relationship is largely influenced by the type and dosage of anesthesia, including the actions on neural processing, vasoactive signal transmission, and vascular reactivity. The effects of anesthesia on the spatial gap between the neural and vascular response regions are not fully understood and require further attention to elucidate the mechanism of vascular control of CBF supply to the underlying focal and surrounding neural activity. The in-depth understanding of the anesthesia actions on neurovascular elements allows for better decision-making regarding the anesthetics used in specific models for neurovascular experiments and may also help elucidate the signal source issues in hemodynamic-based neuroimaging techniques.