January 19th, 2024 –  Nicolas Renier (Laboratoire de Plasticité structurale, ICM, Paris) – The developing post-natal cerebral vasculature

The brain is densely perfused by the vascular network, which provides nutrients and oxygen to support neuronal function. The architecture of the cerebral vasculature addresses specific constrains of the neural tissues, including the near absence of energy storage and very high metabolic demand. Despite the clear observation that both the vascular density and the metabolic demands are heterogenous across the brain, whether and how neuronal activity controls the vascular topology is still debated for several reasons: first, there is no correlation between the densities of neurons and blood vessels. Second, the organization of the vascular and neuronal networks don’t match closely. Third, there is disagreement in the literature on whether modulating neuronal activity levels can lead to a remodeling of the vasculature or not. To better understand the relationship between the metabolic need of the different neural cell types and the topology of the adult vascular network, we built a 3D developmental atlas of the brain vasculature. For this, we generated the annotation maps and templates for the developing mouse brain to align vascular datasets onto. We next optimized a series of computational tools to measure and classify the organization of the different brain regions. We used these tools to generate a system’s view of the developmental trajectories for the various brain regions. Finally, we tested in different models of neuronal activity modulation its impact on the development and maintenance of the network. This work reveals how the vascular network can cater differently to the metabolic needs of both the developing and adult brain, and how cerebral networks shape the development and maintenance of the cerebral vasculature.

Conference Room R229 – Saint-Germain-des-Prés Campus – 45 rue des Saints-Pères, 75006 Paris – January 19th, 2024 at 11:30 AM