ArticleThe Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience2015
Tonic Local Brain Blood Flow Control by Astrocytes Independent of Phasic Neurovascular Coupling.
Article in The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers.
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Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 102 citations in OpenAlex.
- Network analysis identifies consensus physiological measures of neurovascular coupling in humans.Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism · 2020Trial
- Prolonged systemic inflammation worsens impairments to astrocyte CaAlzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Central cytometabolic functional vascular coupling in health and disease.npj metabolic health and disease · 2025Review
- Prolonged systemic inflammation worsens impairments to astrocyte CabioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Fluorescent sensors for intracellular signaling in the brain: imaging neurons, glia, and vascular cells.Neurophotonics · 2025Article
- Acetaminophen affects the duration but not the occurrence of BOLD signal decline in the dorsal hippocampus after induction of neuronal afterdischarges.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Review
- Hemodynamic responses in the rat hippocampus are simultaneously controlled by at least two independently acting neurovascular coupling mechanisms.Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism · 2024Article
- BDNF Signaling in Vascular Dementia and Its Effects on Cerebrovascular Dysfunction, Synaptic Plasticity, and Cholinergic System Abnormality.Journal of lipid and atherosclerosis · 2024Review
- Astrocyte Regulation of Cerebral Blood Flow in Health and Disease.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2024Review
- Neurovascular coupling impairment as a mechanism for cognitive deficits in COVID-19.Brain communications · 2024Review
- From static to dynamic: live observation of the support system after ischemic stroke by two photon-excited fluorescence laser-scanning microscopy.Neural regeneration research · 2023Review
- A quantitative model for human neurovascular coupling with translated mechanisms from animals.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Cooperation between neurovascular dysfunction and Aβ in Alzheimer's disease.Frontiers in molecular neuroscience · 2023Review
- Astrocytes amplify neurovascular coupling to sustained activation of neocortex in awake mice.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Astrocyte regulation of cerebral blood flow during hypoglycemia.Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism · 2022Article
- Toolbox for studying neurovascular couplingNeurophotonics · 2022Review
- Article
- Pericyte Control of Blood Flow Across Microvascular Zones in the Central Nervous System.Annual review of physiology · 2022Review
- Activation of Glutamate Transport Increases Arteriole DiameterFrontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2022Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
According to the current model of neurovascular coupling, blood flow is controlled regionally through phasic changes in the activity of neurons and astrocytes that signal to alter arteriole diameter. Absent in this model, however, is how brain blood flow is tonically regulated independent of regional changes in activity. This is important because a large fraction of brain blood flow is required to maintain basal metabolic needs. Using two-photon fluorescence imaging combined with patch-clamp in acute rat brain slices of sensory-motor cortex, we demonstrate that reducing resting Ca(2+) in astrocytes with intracellular BAPTA causes vasoconstriction in adjacent arterioles. BAPTA-induced vasoconstriction was eliminated by a general COX blocker and the effect is mimicked by a COX-1, but not COX-2, antagonist, suggesting that astrocytes provide tonic, steady-state vasodilation by releasing prostaglandin messengers. Tonic vasodilation was insensitive to TTX, as well as a variety of synaptic and extrasynaptic receptor antagonists, indicating that the phenomenon operates largely independent of neural activity. Using in vivo two-photon fluorescence imaging of the barrel cortex in fully awake mice, we reveal that acute COX-1 inhibition reduces resting arteriole diameter but fails to affect vasodilation in response to vibrissae stimulation. Our findings demonstrate that astrocytes provide tonic regulation of arterioles using resting intracellular Ca(2+) in a manner that is independent of phasic, neuronal-evoked vasodilation. Significance statement: The brain requires both phasic and tonic regulation of its blood supply to service energy needs over various temporal windows. While many mechanisms have been described for phasic blood flow regulation, how the brain accomplishes tonic control is largely unknown. Here we describe a way in which astrocytes contribute to the management of basal brain blood flow by providing steady-state vasodilation to arterioles via resting astrocyte Ca(2+) and the continuous release of prostaglandin messengers. This phenomenon may be important for understanding the declines in basal brain blood flow that occur in aging and dementia, as well as for the interpretation of fMRI data.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.