title: The aerobic brain: lactate decrease at the onset of neural activity.
abstract: The metabolic events of neuronal energetics during functional activity are still partially unexplained. In particular, lactate (and not glucose) was recently proposed as the main substrate for neurons during activity. By means of proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy, lactate was reported to increase during the first minutes of prolonged stimulation, but the studies reported thus far suffered from low temporal resolution. In the present study we used a time-resolved proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy strategy in order to analyse the evolution of lactate during the early seconds following a brief visual stimulation (event-related design). A significant decrease in lactate concentration was observed 5 s after the stimulation, while a recovering of the baseline was observed at 12 s.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mangia
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Garreffa
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Bianciardi
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Giove
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Di Salle
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Maraviglia
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D001923:Brain Chemistry / Q000502:physiology*; D015536:Down-Regulation / Q000502:physiology*; D004734:Energy Metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D005074:Evoked Potentials, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D019344:Lactic Acid / Q000378:metabolism*; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D009474:Neurons / Q000378:metabolism*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology
chemical_list: D019344:Lactic Acid