Cortical neural activity is coupled to local arterial diameter and blood flow. However, which neurons control the dynamics of cerebral arteries is not well understood. We dissected the cellular mechanisms controlling the basal diameter and evoked dilation in cortical arteries in awake, head-fixed mice. Locomotion drove robust arterial dilation, increases in gamma band power in the local field potential (LFP), and increases calcium signals in pyramidal and neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS)-expressing neurons. Chemogenetic or pharmocological modulation of overall neural activity up or down caused corresponding increases or decreases in basal arterial diameter. Modulation of pyramidal neuron activity alone had little effect on basal or evoked arterial dilation, despite pronounced changes in the LFP. Modulation of the activity of nNOS-expressing neurons drove changes in the basal and evoked arterial diameter without corresponding changes in population neural activity.

To generate figure, excute GenerateFigures_Master_Echagarruga_elife.m in Matlab.  It should be run within the directory containing the data folders.

Both cbrewer and Chronux need to be in the Matlab path for the code to run.

cbrewer can be downloaded here: https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/34087-cbrewer-colorbrewer-schemes-for-matlab

Chronux can be downloaded here: http://chronux.org/