In cerebral cortical regions of the conscious Fischer-344 rat, regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) as measured with 14C-indoantipyrine, and the cerebral metabolic rate for O2(CMRO2) do not decline after 3 months of age. On the other hand, the regional cerebral metabolic rate for glucose (rCMRglc) as measured with 14C-2-deoxy-D-glucose, falls significantly in some but not all cerebral cortical regions after 3 months. More generally, rCBF and rCMRglc do not follow identical courses during development and aging of the rat brain, although they remain stoichiometrically coupled among specific regions at any given age. Between 1 and 3 months, both increase in most brain regions, but after 3 months of age rCMRglc tends to fall throughout the brain, whereas rCBF tends to rise or remain unchanged in cerebral cortical regions, and falls after 12 months in posterior brain regions. The courses of rCBF, rCMRglc and CMRO2 during development and aging of the rat brain indicate that (a) stoichiometric coupling between flow and metabolism is maintained between 1 and 34 months of age, (b) the calculated coupling relation between rCBF and rCMRglc changes with age, possibly because rCBF increasingly sensitive to metabolism or because "constants" are employed to calculate rCMRglc or rCBF change with aging, and (c) cerebral cortical oxidative metabolism does not generally decline after 1 year of age. This constantly suggests that plasticity responses in the cerebral cortex of the rat compensate for senescence-associated morphological and neurochemical defects so as to preserve resting cortical functional activity.