Stroke; a journal of cerebral circulation
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Our study describes the anatomy of the middle cerebral artery (MCA) in 65 Sprague-Dawley rats and the spatial distribution of ischemic cortical lesions caused by occluding major MCA branches. The rats characteristically had at least two major MCA branches, frontal and parietal. Many rats had additional branches supplying the pyriform and temporal cortexes. ⋯ In contrast, occlusions of the pyriform branch of the MCA invariably caused infarcts in the frontopyriform region. In about one third of the rats, frontal or parietal branch occlusions produced lesions involving much of the proximal MCA territory; the frontopyriform region was most consistently affected. Combined, these data suggest that the pyriform MCA branch is an end-artery and that the cortical region it supplies is prone to ischemic damage resulting from any reduction of blood flow through the main MCA trunk.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)