Growth of the cranial vault: influence of intracranial and extracranial pressures.

The cranial vault is composed of several flat membranous bones whose growth is mainly a result of the activity in the interposing sutures. The reactions of the calvarium and cranial base to provoke stimuli of the sutures differ depending on their developmental stage. In this report the effects of pressure, exerted extracranially by means of mechanical forces or intracranially by means of hydrodynamic fluctuations, are described.