Abstract
Publisher Summary This chapter discusses oxygen supply to the brain. There is a special significance of supply of oxygen to the brain because of the dramatic and deleterious consequences of insufficient delivery. The brain capillary is called the blood-brain barrier. It is a very tight membrane and most hydrophilic molecules and ions pass through the capillary membrane extremely slowly. The hydrophilic molecules that gain access to the brain at high rate pass through the endothelial cells by virtue of special transport proteins lodged in the plasma membrane. The chapter also discusses the blood-brain barrier during ischemia. The newly developed electrophysiological method for determining the permeability of brain capillaries shows that the capillary wall becomes leaky after a few minutes of ischemia and that the changes are reversible provided the period of anoxia is limited. This observation stresses the possibility that an opening of the blood-brain barrier with access of plasma constituents to the brain and loss of transmitter products from brain to blood may affect brain function when blood flow is resumed.
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