Control of brain blood flow by capillaries: a simulation study in an anatomically accurate large human vascular network

In this paper, the variations in cerebral blood flow induced by global or localised capillary vasodilations are studied. The results demonstrate that pericyte-mediated regulation of blood flowat capillary level would be efficient for neuro-vascular coupling. By contrast to a regulation situated at the level of arterioles (Lorthois et al. 2011b), the changes in blood volume can be highly localised in space, with the potential to be as close as possible of areas of neuronal activation. However, the changes in blood flow are much more diffuse. This imposes limits on the ultimate spatial resolution of hemodynamically based brain functional imaging techniques