Cerebral circulation during acceleration stress

A mathematical model of the cerebrovascular system has been developed to examine the influence of acceleration on cerebral circulation. The objective is to distinguish the main factors that limit cerebral blood flow in pilots subjected to accelerations which exceed the gravitational acceleration of the earth (Gz > 1).; The cerebrovascular system was approximated by an open-loop network of elastic tubes and the flow in blood vessels was modeled according to a one-dimensional theory of flow in collapsible tubes. Since linear analysis showed that the speed of pulse propagation in the intracranial vessels should not be modified by the skull constraint, the same governing equations were used for the intracranial vessels as for the rest of the network. The steady and pulsatile components of the cerebrospinal fluid pressure were determined from the condition that the cranial volume must be conserved. After the qualitative aspects of the model results were verified experimentally, the open-loop geometry was incorporated into a global mathematical model of the cardiovascular system.; Both the mathematical models and the experiment show that cerebral blood flow diminishes for Gz > 1 due to an increase in the resistance of the large veins in the neck, which collapse as soon as the venous pressure becomes negative. In contrast, the conservation of the cranial volume requires that the cerebrospinal and venous pressure always be approximately the same, and the vessels contained in the cranial cavity do not collapse. Positive pressure breathing provides protection by elevating blood arterial and venous pressures at the heart, thus preventing the venous collapse and maintaining the normal cerebral vascular resistance.