Robust increase in supply by vessel dilation in globally coupled microvasculature

Abstract

Neuronal activity induces changes in blood flow by locally dilating vessels in the brain microvasculature. How can the local dilation of a single vessel increase flow-based metabolite supply, given that flows are globally coupled within microvasculature? Solving the supply dynamics for rat brain microvasculature, we find one parameter regime to dominate physiologically. This regime allows for robust increase in supply independent of the position in the network, which we explain analytically. We show that local coupling of vessels promotes spatially correlated increased supply by dilation.