Abstract

We employed optical coherence tomography to measure cerebral cortical capillary red blood cell (RBC) flux in mice. The results suggest that baseline-flux weakly depends on cortical depth. Furthermore, under hypercapnia, low baseline-flux capillaries exhibit greater flux increases while the higher ones saturate, resulting in RBC-flux homogenization. Power-spectrum analysis indicates that higher flux capillaries saw greater flux variability in the low-frequency range (0.01-0.1 Hz) both at baseline and during hypercapnia. These results suggest that lower baseline-flux capillaries have more reserve to deliver oxygen with increased blood flow; but higher ones more strongly impact the low-frequency fluctuations associated with BOLD fMRI measurements of resting state functional connectivity.