Cerebral blood flow is controlled by two crucial processes, cerebral autoregulation (CA) and neurovascular coupling (NVC) or functional hyperemia. Whereas CA ensures constant blood flow over a wide range of systemic pressures, NVC ensures rapid spatial and temporal increases in cerebral blood flow in response to neuronal activation. The focus of this review is to discuss the cellular mechanisms...

V ASCULAR tone, a state of maintained contraction of the smooth muscle in the vessel wall, is the process by which the blood vessel carries out its physiologic functions, its pharmacologic responses, and its pathologic changes. Current research directed at an understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate vascular tone is progressing at a rapid rate. The state of this art was surveyed ...

Although endothelin (ET)-1 is a highly potent vasoconstrictor with considerable efficacy in numerous vascular beds, the role of endogenous ET-1 in the regulation of vascular tone remains unclear. The perspective that ET-1 plays little role in the on-going regulation of vascular tone at least under physiologic conditions is supported by findings that potential ET-1 constriction is minimized by t...