Duarte João M N
Department of Experimental Medical Science, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.
Neurochem Res. 2025 Jan 4;50(1):73. doi: 10.1007/s11064-024-04324-4.
Brain function requires continuous energy supply. Thus, unraveling brain metabolic regulation is critical not only for our basic understanding of overall brain function, but also for the cellular basis of functional neuroimaging techniques. While it is known that brain energy metabolism is exquisitely compartmentalized between astrocytes and neurons, the metabolic and neuro-energetic basis of brain activity is far from fully understood. H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been widely used to detect variations in metabolite levels, including glutamate and GABA, while C NMR spectroscopy has been employed to study metabolic compartmentation and to determine metabolic rates coupled brain activity, focusing mainly on the component corresponding to excitatory glutamatergic neurotransmission. The rates of oxidative metabolism in neurons and astrocytes are both associated with the rate of the glutamate-glutamine cycle between neurons and astrocytes. However, any possible correlation between energy metabolism pathways and the inhibitory GABAergic neurotransmission rate in the living brain remains to be experimentally demonstrated. That is due to low GABA levels, and the consequent challenge of determining GABAergic rates in a non-invasive manner. This brief review surveys the state-of-the-art analyses of energy metabolism in neurons and astrocytes contributing to glutamate and GABA synthesis using C NMR spectroscopy in vivo, and identifies limitations that need to be overcome in future studies.
脑功能需要持续的能量供应。因此，阐明脑代谢调节不仅对于我们对整体脑功能的基本理解至关重要，而且对于功能神经成像技术的细胞基础也至关重要。虽然已知脑能量代谢在星形胶质细胞和神经元之间进行了精细的区室化，但脑活动的代谢和神经能量基础仍远未被完全理解。氢核磁共振（NMR）光谱已被广泛用于检测代谢物水平的变化，包括谷氨酸和γ-氨基丁酸（GABA），而碳核磁共振光谱已被用于研究代谢区室化并确定与脑活动耦合的代谢率，主要关注与兴奋性谷氨酸能神经传递相对应的成分。神经元和星形胶质细胞中的氧化代谢率均与神经元和星形胶质细胞之间的谷氨酸-谷氨酰胺循环速率相关。然而，能量代谢途径与活体脑中抑制性GABA能神经传递速率之间的任何可能相关性仍有待实验证明。这是由于GABA水平较低，以及以非侵入性方式确定GABA能速率所面临的挑战。本简要综述调查了使用体内碳核磁共振光谱对神经元和星形胶质细胞中有助于谷氨酸和GABA合成的能量代谢的最新分析，并确定了未来研究中需要克服的局限性。
