Venue: Centre Broca
Sylvie Lorthois
Directrice de Recherche CNRS
Institut de Mécanique des Fluides de Toulouse
www.imft.fr/
Invited by Jean-Luc Morel (INCIA)
Sylvie Lorthois
Porous and Biological Media Group
Fluid Mechanics Institute of Toulouse
National Center for Scientific Research
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.