Control of brain blood flow by capillaries: a simulation study in an anatomically accurate large human vascular network

摘要

The above results demonstrate that pericyte-mediated regulation of blood flow at capillary level would be efficient for neuro-vascular coupling. By contrast to a regulation situated at the level of arterioles (Lorthois et al. 201 lb), the changes in blood volume can be highly localised in space, with the potential to be as close as possible of areas of neuronal activation. However, the changes in blood flow are much more diffuse. This imposes limits on the ultimate spatial resolution of hemodynamically based brain functional imaging techniques.