Asphyxia, with its attendant hypoxemia, is by far the most common cause of neonatal cerebral infarction, and frequently results in lesions of the parieto-occipital white matter in addition to other neuropathological changes. This study examines the effects of hypoxemia on regional cerebral blood flow (CBF) in the newborn beagle pup. The animals were anesthetized, underwent a tracheotomy, and were paralyzed. Pups were randomly divided into two groups: one group was subjected to hypoxemia produced by altering the oxygen concentration in the inspired air, and the other received no insult. In the hypoxemic pups, the pO2 was 13.1 +/- 2.1 mm Hg (mean +/- standard deviation). Autoradiographic determinations of CBF were performed by the carbon-14-iodoantipyrine technique 15 minutes after randomization. Significant increases in CBF were found throughout the brains of the hypoxemic pups. The CBF was increased to cortical and central gray regions and to frontal and temporal white matter but was unchanged in the parietal white matter, one of the classic sites of radiological and neuropathological injury in neonates with perinatal asphyxia. An unexpected finding was the increased incidence of germinal matrix and/or intraventricular hemorrhages in the hypoxemic pups.