Abstract

Timely diagnosis and management of the cerebral autoregulatory state in neurocritical patients can greatly improve patient prognosis. While in a healthy brain local neural activity and hemodynamics are well matched, a disruption of cerebral autoregulation can drastically alter cerebral blood flow, affecting neuronal function and associated cerebral metabolism. Using bedside non-invasive neuroimaging techniques such as diffuse optical spectroscopy and electroencephalogram, we study the changes in neuro-vascular synergy with autoregulatory state in controlled preclinical models. Here, we propose three different neuro-vascular mechanisms that alter with cerebral dysregulation and can act as biomarkers for clinical assessment of cerebral health.