Optogenetic interrogation of neurovascular coupling in the cerebral cortex of transgenic mice

We introduce an engineering approach to study spatiotemporal correlations between vasodynamics and the nearby neural activity in open-loop and closed-loop paradigms.

We integrated optogenetic technology with optical coherence tomography to apply spatiotemporal patterns of optical neurostimulation to the cortex of transgenic optogenetic mice and measure blood flow-rate, velocity, and diameter changes of selected middle cerebral artery branches.

The spatiotemporal characteristics of blood flow-rate, velocity, and vessel diameter responses to localized neurostimulation light pulses were measured. It was observed that the location of stimulation relative to the surrounding vascular topology had notable effects on temporal patterns of vasodynamic responses. This effect was studied by creating velocity, flow-rate, and diameter sensitivity maps for selected arteries. Generally, neural stimulation in the vicinity of downstream capillaries of an artery evoked a fast transient increase in the blood flow-rate, velocity, and vessel diameter which was followed by a long-lasting secondary peak-response. The temporal span of the flow-rate response was quasi-linearly proportional to the length of stimulation. When neural stimulation was delivered to the area in the vicinity of one daughter branch of an artery, in other branches, we observed some drop in blood velocity and/or flow-rate and concurring increase of the vessel diameter. To examine the reliability of the coupling between neural activity and regional blood flow, a closed-loop feedback controller was implemented which is capable of maintaining blood flow-rate at any desired level for relatively longer periods by continuously adjusting the width of stimulation pulses.

The proposed approach opens new lines of research with potential applications in understanding the role of different cell types in the cerebrovascular regulatory mechanisms and the study of the adaptive process of angiogenesis in the cerebral cortex. The observation of incoherent responses of vessel diameter, blood flow-rate, and velocity suggests that such detailed information is necessary to obtain an accurate interpretation of the data acquired via hemodynamic based functional imaging techniques.