The rate of oxygen disappearance from the gerbil cerebral cortex was measured during bilateral carotid artery occlusion with an oxygen microelectrode at normal tissue PO2 and under hyperbaric oxygenation. The oxygen disappearance rate (ODR) was found to be heavily dependent on the PO2 at occlusion due to the desaturation of hemoglobin-bound oxygen. When the tissue PO2 was elevated to a level high enough to saturate hemoglobin, the ODR reflected the oxygen consumption rate which was calculated to range from 1.6-7.4 cc O2/100 cc tissue-min. for ten barbiturate-anesthetized animals. The fall in PO2 was found not to be totally linear to zero in many cases, but instead consisted of a linear phase followed by a period of decreasing slope. We believe this phase of changing slope represents a diminishing oxygen consumption rate. The exact nature of this decrease is not known but perhaps is an inhibitory response to the accumulation of metabolites as a result of the circulation arrest.