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High-resolution neurometabolic coupling revealed by focal activation of visual neurons

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, pages 919–920 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Functional magnetic resonance imaging is an important tool for measuring brain function noninvasively, but the vascular and metabolic changes on which its measurements are based are not fully understood. Here, we examined the relationship between these changes and neural activity on a fine spatial scale through simultaneous measurements of tissue oxygen and extracellular neural activity in the cat lateral geniculate nucleus. Our findings indicate that activity-dependent increases in cerebral blood flow and oxidative metabolism occur on different spatial scales, and that the ratio between the two depends on the size of the activated neural population.

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Figure 1: Size and mask tuning of tissue oxygen and multiunit neural responses.
Figure 2: Population averages of size and mask tuning curves for tissue oxygen and multiunit neural responses.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Li, S. Bierer and L. Altamirano for help with data collection. This work was supported by National Eye Institute grants EY01175 and EY03176.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Group in Vision Science, School of Optometry, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, 94720-2020, California, USA

    Jeffrey K Thompson, Matthew R Peterson & Ralph D Freeman

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  1. Jeffrey K Thompson
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  2. Matthew R Peterson
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  3. Ralph D Freeman
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Correspondence to Ralph D Freeman.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Fig. 1

Maximum stimulus-induced signal change and SNR for positive and negative oxygen responses at each of the 34 recording sites. (a) Response amplitude. Each point (●) represents the maximum stimulus-induced change in oxygen (positive and negative) observed at a given recording site during the first 8 seconds following stimulus onset. Mean values (arrows) are 15.8 ± 10.8% and −5.6 ± 4.1% for positive and negative changes, respectively. (b) Response SNR. Values from (a) were divided by the noise in the baseline oxygen signal. Noise is determined by the standard deviation of the raw baseline oxygen signal (expressed in percent change). Mean values are 4.1 ± 1.8 and −1.3 ± 0.8 for positive and negative SNRs respectively. Open squares (□) represent values observed from the example recording site shown in Figure 1. (PDF 29 kb)

Supplementary Methods (PDF 27 kb)

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Thompson, J., Peterson, M. & Freeman, R. High-resolution neurometabolic coupling revealed by focal activation of visual neurons. Nat Neurosci 7, 919–920 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1308

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