Curbing action potential generation or ATP-synthase leads to a decrease in in-cell pyruvate dehydrogenase activity in rat cerebrum slices.

Direct and real-time monitoring of cerebral metabolism exploiting the drastic increase in sensitivity of hyperpolarized C-labeled metabolites holds the potential to report on neural activity via in-cell metabolic indicators. Here, we followed the metabolic consequences of curbing action potential generation and ATP-synthase in rat cerebrum slices, induced by tetrodotoxin and oligomycin, respectively. The results suggest that pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) activity in the cerebrum is 4.4-fold higher when neuronal firing is unperturbed. The PDH activity was 7.4-fold reduced in the presence of oligomycin, and served as a pharmacological control for testing the ability to determine changes to PDH activity in viable cerebrum slices. These findings may open a path towards utilization of PDH activity, observed by magnetic resonance of hyperpolarized C-labeled pyruvate, as a reporter of neural activity.