Brain plasticity: metabolic aspects

大脑的可塑性涉及许多重塑神经网络的过程，以允许建立新的路径或重塑现有的路径。这些过程需要新陈代谢能量，而大脑普遍存在的能量底物是葡萄糖。多年来，我一直在研究葡萄糖转运蛋白，这种转运蛋白参与了葡萄糖向脑细胞的促进运输。我最近发现，在操作杆按压任务中进行训练后，GLUT1葡萄糖转运体的密度在大脑的一些区域增加。因此，有证据表明，葡萄糖转运蛋白的可塑性变化可能提供了额外的能量，以允许树突萌发、突触重塑和脊柱发育等重塑过程。虽然“经典”的葡萄糖转运蛋白已经被绘制出来(GLUT1-4)，但新发现的葡萄糖转运蛋白在大脑中仍有待研究，部分原因是缺乏适用于免疫组织化学的良好抗体。我们将研究学习和记忆处理产生的大脑激活如何增加脑细胞中这些转运蛋白的数量。此外，我们还将研究葡萄糖转运蛋白在正常和病理性衰老过程中大脑葡萄糖摄取减少中的作用。这项研究计划将解决我们对大脑新陈代谢的基础知识中的一个重要缺口，这个缺口在过去被忽视了。

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 the density of the GLUT1 glucose transporter increases in a number of brain regions following training in an operant bar-pressing task. 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. Although the "classic" glucose transporters have been mapped (GLUT1-4), the newly discovered glucose transporters remain to be studied in the brain partly due to a lack of good antibodies suitable for immunohistochemistry. We will examine how brain activation produced by learning and memory processing can increase the number of these transporters in brain cells. Also, we will examine the role of glucose transporters in the reduction of glucose uptake in the brain during normal and pathological aging. This research program will address an important gap in our basic knowledge of brain metabolism that has been neglected in the past.