Cerebral Metabolic and Circulatory Responses to Induced Convulsions in Animals

CONVULSIONS place a heavy metabolic demand upon the brain and are followed by metabolic and clinical sequelae which are incompletely understood. Although the blood pressure1,2and cerebral blood flow3-6are known to increase during seizures, efforts to quantify the increase in flow and to document the dynamics of the associated changes in cerebral metabolism have yielded fragmentary and sometimes conflicting results. Thus, some workers have reported that the oxygen tension of the cerebral tissue or venous blood falls during seizures,7,8while others have noted a rise.9Also, some workers have reported large increases in cerebral acid products during convulsions,6,10while others have found no predictable elevation.5Part of the explanation for these discrepancies may be that in many sets of observations the effects on the cerebral circulation of alterations in muscle metabolism and respiration were not always clearly differentiated from the direct metabolic