Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism

Cerebral Blood Flow: It is defined as the quantity of blood flowing per unit weight per unit time in cerebral cortex and is usually expressed in millilitres of blood. CBF is regulated by four major mechanisms: metabolic control (or metabolic autoregulation, pressure autoregulation, and so on. Neural control, chemical control (via arterial pCO2 and pO2). Among the methods used to determine CBF in human participants are:

• Single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), 
• Positron emission tomography (PET),
• MRI with contrast agents,
• Arterial spin labelling (ASL) MRI.

Metabolism: Metabolism is used to express all chemical reactions included in continuing the living state of the cells and the organism. Metabolism can be efficiently divided into two categories: Catabolism and Anabolism. Catabolism refers to the breakdown of molecules to obtain energy and Anabolism refers to the synthesis of all compounds needed by the cells.