Alterations of cerebral metabolism or perfusion due to lesions of the central nervous system

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) provides non-invasive measures of brain physiology and biochemistry in quantitative terms and is frequently applied to the investigation of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and glucose metabolism (CMRGlu) in health and disease. Both CBF and CMRGlu may serve as indicators of regional neuronal activity and may provide tools for functional brain imaging of cerebral plasticity following central nervous system injury. This review will briefly describe the technique currently used to investigate brain function with PET and will summarize results on motor activation in healthy subjects. It will further illustrate how resting brain energy metabolism changes following transverse spinal cord injury. In addition, data from activation studies in stroke patients will be presented which indicate that recovery of motor function is associated with the recruitment of cortical regions of the non-damaged hemisphere and with the extension of activated brain areas adjacent to brain lesions themselves.