Synopsis

In this educational talk I will give a broad overview of haemodynamic coupling and BOLD biophysics. I talk about neurovascular coupling mechanisms including feedback versus feedforward mechanisms, vasodilation and vasodilators. From the perspective of the physiology of the BOLD signal I talk about the haemodynamic and metabolic contributions to the BOLD response. I then describe how these physiological changes translate into the measured BOLD signal including the effects of pulse sequence, vessel size and magnetic field strength.