Abstract
Blood flow in the brain is regulated by neurons and astrocytes. Knowledge of how these cells control blood flow is crucial for understanding how neural computation is powered, for interpreting functional imaging scans of brains, and for developing treatments for neurological disorders. It is now recognized that neurotransmitter-mediated signalling has a key role in regulating cerebral blood flow, that much of this control is mediated by astrocytes, that oxygen modulates blood flow regulation, and that blood flow may be controlled by capillaries as well as by arterioles. These conceptual shifts in our understanding of cerebral blood flow control have important implications for the development of new therapeutic approaches.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 232-243 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Nature |
| Volume | 468 |
| Issue number | 7321 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 11 2010 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements We apologize to those whose work we have not cited because of space constraints. We thank the following for useful discussion: K. Caesar, A. Gjedde, C. Hall, A. Mishra, G. Rees and A. Roth. Work in our laboratories is supported by the Fondation Leducq, the European Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, the UK Medical Research Council, the Dunhill Medical Trust, the Biomedical Research Centres of the UK National Institute for Health Research, the European Commission’s Sixth Framework Programme, the Human Frontier Science Program, the Danish Medical Research Council, the Lundbeck Foundation, the Nordea Foundation Centre for Healthy Aging, the Novo Nordisk Foundation, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience, and the US National Institutes of Health (National Eye Institute).