PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Fei He
AU  - Colin Sullender
AU  - Hanlin Zhu
AU  - Michael R. Williamson
AU  - Xue Li
AU  - Zhengtuo Zhao
AU  - Theresa A. Jones
AU  - Chong Xie
AU  - Andrew K. Dunn
AU  - Lan Luan
TI  - Multimodal mapping of neural activity and cerebral blood flow reveals long-lasting neurovascular dissociations after small-scale strokes
AID  - 10.1101/2020.03.04.977322
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.03.04.977322
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/05/2020.03.04.977322.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/05/2020.03.04.977322.full
AB  - Neurovascular coupling, the close spatial and temporal relationship between neural activity and hemodynamics, is disrupted in pathological brain states. To understand the altered neurovascular relationship in brain disorders, longitudinal, simultaneous mapping of neural activity and hemodynamics is critical yet challenging to achieve. Here, we employ a multimodal neural platform in a mouse model of stroke and realize long-term, spatially-resolved tracking of intracortical neural activity and cerebral blood flow in the same brain regions. We observe a pronounced neurovascular dissociation that occurs immediately after small-scale strokes, becomes the most severe a few days after, lasts into chronic periods, and varies with the level of ischemia. Neuronal deficits extend spatiotemporally whereas restoration of cerebral blood flow occurs sooner and reaches a higher relative value. Our findings reveal the neurovascular impact of mini-strokes and inform the limitation of neuroimaging techniques that infer neural activity from hemodynamic responses.