Increased cerebral blood flow during hypercapnia is not affected by lesion of the nucleus locus ceruleus.

To test the hypothesis that the putative noradrenergic innervation of intraparenchymal cerebral blood vessels from the nucleus locus ceruleus mediates the vasodilatory response to hypercapnia, regional cerebral blood flow was measured by iodo-[14C]antipyrine autoradiography in awake and restrained rats with unilateral 6-hydroxydopamine lesion of the nucleus locus ceruleus and in unlesioned control rats. Hypercapnia, induced by the inhalation of 5% or 8% CO2 in air for 8 minutes caused a 2 to 5-fold increase in regional cerebral blood flow. However, despite a marked reduction of about 90% in cortical norepinephrine levels ipsilateral to the lesion, blood flow to the frontal and parietal cortex, hippocampus, striatum and cerebellum increased to the same extent in ipsilateral and contralateral regions. Thus, lesion of the locus ceruleus and the resultant depletion of endogenous cortical and hippocampal norepinephrine, does not influence the cerebrovascular response to hypercapnia.