The BOLD undershoot in cat visual cortex occurred in both tissue and surface vessels. The CBV in gray matter, however, remained elevated after stimulus cessation, while CBV at the surface decayed rapidly to

baseline (Yacoub et al., 2006; Zhao et al., 2007); this was also observed in the macaque (data not shown). The above observations suggest the possibility that the poststimulus undershoot and the negative BOLD response may share a similar mechanism, resulting in a decrease of blood flow in the large vessels at the surface, while the parenchyma (the deeper layers) stays hyperemic. However, the temporal overlap makes PD-0332991 cost the individual contributions to the poststimulus undershoot difficult to disentangle, and vascular compliance effects can also explain the time course of the CBV (Buxton et al., 1998, 2004; Leite et al., 2002; Mandeville et al., 1999a, 1999b). Acquiring the time course of the CBF at laminar resolution could resolve the potential similarities between the negative BOLD and the poststimulus undershoot. Another stimulus paradigm that reliably yields negative BOLD responses is ipsilateral inhibition, and it is likely that this paradigm would result in similar laminar profiles to the ones found here. Although negative BOLD responses have also been shown in cases of physiological challenge, like seizures or low blood pressure (Nagaoka et al., 2006; Schridde et al., 2008),

its mechanism and laminar profiles might very well differ AZD2281 price from the stimulus-driven negative BOLD response. However, this requires further study. Decreases in the cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen consumption (CMRO2) were seen in areas with negative BOLD using MRI-based methods (Shmuel et al., 2002; Stefanovic et al., 2004). Although it is likely that the reduced neural activity (Shmuel et al., 2006) leads to a reduced energy use, this cannot automatically be inferred, and CMRO2 changes could also be layer dependent. Layer-dependent CMRO2 is suggested by observations that glucose and O2 consumption are highest in layer IV (Carroll and Wong-Riley, 1984; Li and Freeman, 2011, 2012; Tootell

et al., 1988b), while 2-deoxyglucose autoradiography in V1 showed that for areas adjacent crotamiton to stimulated areas, glucose use depended on stimulus properties and retinotopic location (Tootell et al., 1988b). The increase in CBV in the deeper layers might be driven by a cortical-layer-dependent increase in energy use, which could be the result of layer-dependent or neuron-type-dependent increases in neural activity. A possible driver of the microvascular dilation is an increase in the activity of inhibitory interneurons; these are often missed with standard microelectrodes, but they can have high firing rates. Inhibitory activity has been shown to cost energy (McCasland and Hibbard, 1997; Nudo and Masterton, 1986) and might lead to a vascular response also.