Cerebral Blood Flow and Brain Mitochondrial Redox State Responses to Various Perturbations in Gerbils

Abstract

The interrelation between cerebral blood flow and metabolism is an important factor in understanding brain functions under normal and pathological situations. Since few of the situations, such as spreading depression and epilepsy, are transient and are not in steady state it became necessary to monitor the various parameters under observation in real time and in a continuous mode. Until recently CBF monitoring was limited to a single time point per animal using mapping technique or to a 10–15 minutes interval between single measurements. The development of the Laser Doppler flowmeter (LDF) opened up the possibility of monitoring CBF in a real time continuous mode (Stern et al 1977). As shown by a few groups, the CBF monitored by the LDF technique was significantly correlated to the flow measured by other quantitative techniques (Haberl et al 1989; Dirnagl et al 1989). Since CBF is only one of the important parameters to be measured we incorporated a laser Doppler probe into the multiprobe assembly developed by us a few years ago (Friedli et al 1982; Mayevsky 1983). Since all the probes used in the MPA are surface probes we also monitored the CBF from the surface of the brain.