Brain plasticity: cellular and metabolic aspects

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Brain plasticity involves a number of processes that reshape the neuronal networks to allow new pathways to be established or existing pathways to be remodeled. These processes require metabolic energy and the ubiquitous energy substrate for the brain is glucose. For a number of years, I have been studying glucose transporters that are involved in the facilitated transport of glucose into brain cells. I have recently found that, in mice, the density of the GLUT1 glucose transporter increases in a number of brain regions following training in an operant bar-pressing task or by running in a running wheel. So, there is some evidence that plastic changes of glucose transporters may provide the additional energy to allow the remodeling processes involving dendritic sprouting, synapse remodeling and spine development. One of the way neuron received fuel is through astrocytes in the form of lactate which is transporter into neurons by monocarboxylate transporters. We will examine how brain activation produced by learning and memory processing can increase the number of these transporters in brain cells. This research program will address an important gap in our basic knowledge of brain metabolism that has been neglected in the past.