Premium
In silico study of lactate metabolism in brain during visual stimulation
Author(s) -
Occhipinti Rossana,
Somersalo Erkki,
Calvetti Daniela
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.23.1_supplement.lb113
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , in silico , biological system , glutamatergic , neuroscience , astrocyte , chemistry , metabolism , biophysics , biology , biochemistry , glutamate receptor , paleontology , receptor , gene , central nervous system
Due to the lack of direct in vivo measurements of the partitioning of lactate and glucose between astrocytes and neurons during activation, interpretation of the available in vivo experimental data is all but straightforward. This has led to the formulation of different hypotheses on the metabolic role of astrocytes and neurons. The interpretation of lactate dynamics in the context of compartmentalized metabolism requires the formulation of mathematical models. In this work we employ a new dynamic computational model of the astrocyte‐glutamatergic neuron cellular complex, previously used and validated for steady state investigations (Occhipinti et al. 2008), which uses Michaelis‐Menten type kinetic expressions for the reactions and transport rates. The distributions of the kinetic parameters which identify the model are estimated by employing a new methodology, based on Bayesian statistics. The model predictions, trained on data collected by NMR spectroscopy in human visual cortex (Mangia et al. 2007), are in agreement with the suggestion already proposed by Gjedde et al. 2001, that neurons would be responsible for the observed increase in extracellular lactate concentrations during stimulation. The ensemble of model predictions is further investigated to identify important casual relations which may shade some light on the mystery of lactate metabolism in brain.