Maolin Qiu1, Ramachandran Ramani2, R. Todd Constable1
1Diagnostic Radiology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States; 2Anesthesiology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, United States
The anesthetic effects of different agents on CBF have been investigated in recent years, however, variability in results among the studies exists. We use pulsed arterial spin labeling (PASL) MRI, with the similar experiment protocols, to assess the regional CBF changes in healthy human volunteers induced by sevoflurane and propofol. Our results showed, in the presence of an anesthetic, the observed regional CBF is the interplay among local neuronal activity that contributes to the regional changes in CBF via the neurovascular coupling, the distributions of the neuroceptors as the molecular targets of the agent, the neurophysiology of the brain, i.e., the subsystems of the brain that the anesthetic progressively suppressed, and the vascular structure of the brain.