Venue: Centre Broca
Sylvie Lorthois
Directrice de Recherche CNRS
Porous and Biological Media Group – Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse
www.imft.fr/
Invited by Jean-Luc Morel (INCIA)
Title
In silico modeling of brain microvascular function to highlight the overlap between cerebrovascular and Alzheimer’s Disease.
Abstract
The cerebral microvascular system is essential to a large variety of physiological processes in the brain, including blood delivery, neurotoxic waste clearance and blood flow regulation as a function of neuronal activity (neuro-vascular coupling). It also plays a major role in disease (stroke, neurodegenerative diseases, …). However, the functional consequences of vascular damage (including acute occlusions or long-term remodeling in ageing or disease) are poorly understood.
In this context, in silico modeling approaches are increasingly important, and enable to integrate the specific multi-scale architecture of the brain microvascular network with the physics of blood flow in confined conditions. I will discuss how the resulting scaling-laws for blood flow and molecular transport are mostly driven by the topology of the microvascular network, deterministically leading to the emergence of hypoxic pockets in sub-cortical regions under mild hypoperfusion. I will highlight how these results help understand the overlap between cerebrovascular and Alzheimer’s Disease.