Transfer function analysis of dynamic cerebral autoregulation in humans

To test the hypothesis that spontaneous changes in cerebral blood flow are primarily induced by changes in arterial pressure and that cerebral autoregulation is a frequency-dependent phenomenon, we measured mean arterial pressure in the finger and mean blood flow velocity in the middle cerebral artery (V̇(MCA)) during supine rest and acute hypotension induced by thigh cuff deflation in 10 healthy subjects. Transfer function gain, phase, and coherence function between changes in arterial pressure and V̇(MCA) were estimated using the Welch method. The impulse response function, calculated as the inverse Fourier transform of this transfer function, enabled the calculation of transient changes in V̇(MCA) during acute hypotension, which was compared with the directly measured change in V̇(MCA) during thigh cuff deflation. Beat-to-beat changes in V̇(MCA) occurred simultaneously with changes in arterial pressure, and the autospectrum of V̇(MCA) showed characteristics similar to arterial pressure. Transfer gain increased substantially with increasing frequency from 0.07 to 0.20 Hz in association with a gradual decrease in phase. The coherence function was >0.5 in the frequency range of 0.07-0.30 Hz and <0.5 at <0.07 Hz. Furthermore, the predicted change in V̇(MCA) was similar to the measured V̇(MCA) during thigh cuff deflation. These data suggest that spontaneous changes in V̇(MCA) that occur at the frequency range of 0.07-0.30 Hz are related strongly to changes in arterial pressure and, furthermore, that short-term regulation of cerebral blood flow in response to changes in arterial pressure can be modeled by a transfer function with the quality of a high-pass filter in the frequency range of 0.07-0.30 Hz.