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Neuroscience

Pre-emptive blood flow

Nature volume 457, pages 387–388 (2009)Cite this article

Electrical signalling among brain cells summons the local delivery of extra blood — the basis of functional brain imaging. Yet sometimes, blood is sent in anticipation of neural events that never take place.

The brain makes up only 2% of the human body mass, but because of its high energy demands it receives more than 15% of the cardiac output. When blood enters the brain, it doesn't course indiscriminately through the organ's vessels; instead, it is selectively channelled to specific regions in a need-based fashion. On page 475 of this issue, Sirotin and Das1 show that, sometimes, blood is sent to the brain's visual cortex in the absence of any stimulus, priming the neural tissue in apparent anticipation of future events.

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Figure 1: Behavioural modulation of blood flow.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. David A. Leopold is in the Unit on Cognitive Neurophysiology and Imaging, Laboratory of Neuropsychology, National Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA. leopoldd@mail.nih.gov ,

    David A. Leopold

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  1. David A. Leopold
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Leopold, D. Pre-emptive blood flow. Nature 457, 387–388 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/457387a

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