School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, UK.
Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex, Falmer, UK.
Methods Mol Biol. 2021;2235:89-117. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-1056-5_7.
The brain's high energy requirements drive the need for close coupling of local neuronal activity to blood supply. Capillaries have been shown to dilate before arterioles in response to sensory stimulation, pointing to a key role for microvascular pericytes in mediating cerebrovascular dynamics. However, many aspects of these cells' function remain unknown and even controversial, from their identification, to the mechanism and regulation of their contractility in physiology and disease. Investigating how pericytes regulate vascular diameter is therefore likely to be the subject of many future experiments. Here we provide protocols for three different techniques (ex vivo slice imaging, in vivo imaging, and immunohistochemistry) that are highly valuable for performing such experiments.
大脑的高能量需求促使局部神经元活动与血液供应紧密耦合。已经证明，在对感觉刺激的反应中，毛细血管比小动脉先扩张，这表明微血管周细胞在介导脑血管动力学方面起着关键作用。然而，这些细胞的许多功能仍然未知，甚至存在争议，从它们的鉴定，到它们在生理和疾病中的收缩机制和调节。因此，研究周细胞如何调节血管直径可能是许多未来实验的主题。在这里，我们提供了三种不同技术（离体切片成像、体内成像和免疫组织化学）的方案，这些技术对于进行此类实验非常有价值。
