Most of the cerebral microcirculation is comprised of capillaries that are lined with pericytes, but the influence of pericytes on local blood flow was not previously established. A new study by Hartmann and colleagues uses selective optical ablation or activation to demonstrate that capillary pericytes exert both static and slow types of regulation on capillary diameter to affect flow, which are distinct from canonical rapid regulation by arteriole smooth muscle.
References
Pough, F. H. American Zoologist 20, 173–185 (1980).
Gould, I. G., Tsai, P., Kleinfeld, D. & Linninger, A. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 37, 52–68 (2017).
Attwell, D., Mishra, A., Hall, C. N., O’Farrell, F. M. & Dalkara, T. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 36, 451–455 (2016).
Hall, C. N. et al. Nature 508, 55–60 (2014).
Kisler, K. et al. Nat. Neurosci. 20, 406–416 (2017).
Hill, R. A. et al. Neuron 87, 95–110 (2015).
Fernández-Klett, F., Offenhauser, N., Dirnagl, U., Priller, J. & Lindauer, U. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 107, 22290–22295 (2010).
Hartmann, D. A. et al. Nat. Neurosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-00793-2 (2021).
Kureli, G. et al. Exp. Neurol. 332, 113392 (2020).
Gutiérrez-Jiménez, E. et al. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 38, 290–303 (2018).
Watson, A. N. et al. J. Cereb. Blood Flow Metab. 40, 2387–2400 (2020).
Alarcon-Martinez, L. et al. Nature 585, 91–95 (2020).
Yemisci, M. et al. Nat Med 15, 1031–1037 (2009).
Alarcon-Martinez, L. et al. Acta Neuropathol. Commun. 7, 134 (2019).
Nortley, R. et al. Science 365, eaav9518 (2019).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Institoris, A., Gordon, G.R. A tense relationship between capillaries and pericytes. Nat Neurosci 24, 615–617 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-021-00853-1
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-021-00853-1
- Springer Nature America, Inc.