PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Dembitskaya, Yulia
AU  - Piette, Charlotte
AU  - Perez, Sylvie
AU  - Berry, Hugues
AU  - Magistretti, Pierre J
AU  - Venance, Laurent
TI  - Lactate supply overtakes glucose when neural computational and cognitive loads scale up
AID  - 10.1101/2022.05.23.493059
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.05.23.493059
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/23/2022.05.23.493059.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/05/23/2022.05.23.493059.full
AB  - The neural computational power is determined by neuroenergetics, but how and which energy substrates are allocated to various forms of memory engram is unclear. To solve this question, we asked whether neuronal fueling by glucose or lactate scales differently upon increasing neural computation and cognitive loads. Here, using electrophysiology, two-photon imaging, cognitive tasks and mathematical modeling, we show that both glucose and lactate are involved in engram formation, with lactate supporting long-term synaptic plasticity evoked by high stimulation load activity patterns and high attentional load in cognitive tasks, and glucose being sufficient for less demanding neural computation and learning tasks. Overall, these results demonstrate that glucose and lactate metabolisms are differentially engaged in neuronal fueling depending on the complexity of the activity-dependent plasticity and behavior.One sentence summary Neuronal fueling by lactate versus glucose scales differently according to engram level and memory load.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.