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Blood Brain Changes

Real-time imaging of the whole brain's vessels and oxygen levels

08 June 2022

Blood Brain Changes

Your brain makes up around 2% of your body weight but guzzles around 20% of the oxygen carried via your blood. Unsurprisingly, damage to your brain's blood vessels can have serious consequences, as happens in stroke, traumatic brain injuries and dementia. To better understand what happens in these conditions, researchers present a novel microscopy technique — ultrafast functional photoacoustic microscopy (UFF-PAM) — to image the blood flow and blood oxygen levels (pictured) in whole mouse brains quickly and in great detail. The team triggered different conditions in the mice: low oxygen levels (hypoxia), low blood pressure (hypotension) and stroke. UFF-PAM subsequently revealed rapid changes in their brains. This included the simultaneous constriction of blood vessels and drop in oxygen levels, seen at the level of micro-vessels, as a wave of electrical activity associated with stroke spread across the brain. This demonstrates the rapid, detailed data UFF-PAM can produce for brain research.

Written by Lux Fatimathas

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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