CEREBRAL CIRCULATION

Abstract

It is a common opinion among physiologists that the cerebral blood vessels do not possess effective vasomotor nerve control. The strongest evidence on which this opinion rests has been brought forward by a number of English physiologists, notably Roy and Sherrington,¹Bayliss and Leonard Hill,²Hill and Macleod³and Florey.⁴Several Germans⁵have also contributed evidence pointing toward the same conclusion. On the other hand, many important observations which are difficult to reconcile with this point of view have been reported by investigators from Germany,⁶from France,⁷from the United States,⁸and elsewhere.⁹Our own experiments bring new evidence in favor of the functional activity of vasomotor fibers in the blood vessels of the pia mater. The question whether or not the cerebral vessels possess a vasomotor control is not merely of academic interest, for many clinical conditions such as convulsions