Abstract
The mechanism of rapid energy supply to the brain, especially to accommodate the heightened metabolic activity of excited states, is not well-understood. We explored the role of glycogen as a fuel source for neuromodulation using the noradrenergic stimulation of glia in a computational model of the neural-glial-vasculature ensemble (NGV). The detection of norepinephrine (NE) by the astrocyte and the coupled cAMP signal are rapid and largely insensitive to the distance of the locus coeruleus projection release sites from the glia, implying a diminished impact for volume transmission in high affinity receptor transduction systems. Glucosyl-conjugated units liberated from glial glycogen by NE-elicited cAMP second messenger transduction winds sequentially through the glycolytic cascade, generating robust increases in NADH and ATP before pyruvate is finally transformed into lactate. This astrocytic lactate is rapidly exported by monocarboxylate transporters to the associated neuron, demonstrating that the astrocyte-to-neuron lactate shuttle activated by glycogenolysis is a likely fuel source for neuromodulation and enhanced neural activity. Altogether, the energy supply for both astrocytes and neurons can be supplied rapidly by glycogenolysis upon neuromodulatory stimulus.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | e1006392 |
Journal | PLoS computational biology |
Volume | 14 |
Issue number | 8 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2018 Coggan et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
- Modeling and Simulation
- Ecology
- Molecular Biology
- Genetics
- Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
- Computational Theory and Mathematics