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Reading vascular changes in brain imaging: is dendritic calcium the key?

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 6, pages 77–85 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

A key goal in functional neuroimaging is to use signals that are related to local changes in metabolism and blood flow to track the neuronal correlates of mental activity. Recent findings indicate that the dendritic processing of excitatory synaptic inputs correlates more closely than the generation of spikes with brain imaging signals. The correlation is often nonlinear and context-sensitive, and cannot be generalized for every condition or brain region. The vascular signals are mainly produced by increases in intracellular calcium in neurons and possibly astrocytes, which activate important enzymes that produce vasodilators to generate increments in flow and the positive blood oxygen level dependent signal. Our understanding of the cellular mechanisms of functional imaging signals places constraints on the interpretation of the data.

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Figure 1: Neurophysiological basis of activity-dependent increases in cerebral blood flow illustrated by examples obtained from the cerebellar cortex.
Figure 2: Synaptic inhibition modulates activity of vasodilator-producing enzymes in dendrites by attenuating calcium increases.
Figure 3: Simplistic model of the proposed effect of synaptic inhibition on activity-dependent blood flow and blood oxygen level dependent contrast signals.
Figure 4: Modulation of blood flow, oxygen consumption and blood oxygen level dependent contrast signal under mild excitation.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by The Lundbeck Foundation, The Humboldt Foundation, NeuroScience PharmaBiotech, The Danish Medical Research Council, The Carlsberg Foundation, The Brødrene Hartmann Foundation and the NOVO-Nordisk Foundation. I thank Jens Midtgaard, David Attwell, Ulrich Dirnagl, Kirsten Caesar and Kirsten Thomsen for extended discussion on these issues, and for comments on the manuscript. Kirsten Caesar kindly helped me with the figures.

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  1. Department of Clinical Neurophysiology, Glostrup Hospital, Glostrup, DK-2600, Denmark

    Martin Lauritzen

  2. Department of Medical Physiology, Panum Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, DK-2200, Denmark

    Martin Lauritzen

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Lauritzen, M. Reading vascular changes in brain imaging: is dendritic calcium the key?. Nat Rev Neurosci 6, 77–85 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1589

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