Exploring The Effect Of Vagus Nerve Stimulation On Cerebral Blood Flow Plasticity In Ischemic Stroke Based On Tissue Clearing Technique

One goal in neuroscience is to explore plasticity and its mechanisms within the nervous system,including neuronal connections and cerebral vessel networks.To accomplish this,imaging of the neuronal connections or microvascular networks need to be imaged and followed in the entire brain.However,virtual reconstruction techniques based on traditional pathological slice sequences can lose slice information and are extremely time-consuming,while non-invasive imaging techniques such as MRI have limited resolution.Tissue clearing technology can achieve high-resolution imaging of neuronal and vascular connections in several millimeters of depth without tissue sectioning.Combined with biomarking technology and microscopic imaging technology,organelle-to-organ imaging can be achieved.Vagus nerve electrical stimulation has the effect of regulating nervous system plasticity and has a protective effect on cerebral tissue of ischemic stroke.Cerebral blood flow plasticity may be one of the mechanisms that partially compensate the blood supply in the infarct area after cerebral ischemia.We hypothesized that vagal nerve stimulation exerts its neuroprotective effect by enhancing cerebral blood flow plasticity and promoting the opening of collateral circulation.In this paper,the efficacy of vagus nerve stimulation in the model of middle cerebral artery occlusion in mice,the compatibility of vascular fluorescence labeling technology with different transparent methods,and the combination of optical microscopy imaging technology and tissue clearing were used to achieve the whole brain microvascular structure.The imaging provided direct evidence for microvascular changes in ischemic stroke.By comparing the microvascular changes in the infarct zone between the vagus nerve stimulation group and the control group,evidence was provided for the presence of spontaneous opening of collateral circulation in the infarct area,and it was proved that vagus nerve stimulation can significantly promote the opening of the functional collateral circulation in the infarct zone,suggesting that it plays a neuroprotective role through cerebral blood flow plasticity enhancement.The rational and creative combination of the emerging tissue clearing technologies,and biomarking technologies and various microscopic imaging tools will provide new perspectives for the study of disease models.