About this Research Topic
Neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders pose a significant burden on human health and society throughout the world. Therefore, there is a critical need for effective, sustainable, and affordable strategies to treat these types of disease. Information processing by the brain is metabolically expensive, yet crucial to support action potential generation and synaptic transmission. Therefore, the availability of energy could shape the activity patterns in the brain to favor more or less energetically demanding neuronal circuits. This suggests that understanding how energy metabolism shapes the activity of small neuronal circuits and large neural networks in the brain could contribute to the future development of new tools for the prevention and delayed onset of different neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. Various studies note how glucose supply and different dietary regimes can affect synaptic plasticity and cognitive function, and contribute to neuroprotection. Conversely, nutritional deficiencies contribute to impaired neurodevelopment. Likewise, exercise plays a key role in the prevention and delayed progression of neurological disease through a variety of cellular and molecular mechanisms. Exercise promotes hippocampal neurogenesis, attenuates inflammation and reduces glucocorticoid levels during stress in healthy and diseased individuals. In addition, synaptic plasticity is enhanced during exercise, representing a potential avenue for ameliorating symptoms of depressive and anxiety disorders.
Whilst there is a growing body of work studying the effects of energy metabolism on the functions of the brain, there are still many unanswered questions on the mechanisms that underlie these changes and their potential role in disease prevention.
This Research Topic aims to bring about new findings on the cellular and molecular processes that underlie changes in the brain energy metabolism and how this can impact brain function in health and disease. This Topic is open to basic research studies in animal models and in humans. We welcome original research, timely reviews, methods and perspective pieces based on the following, but not limited to:
• Cellular and/or molecular mechanisms shaped by changes in brain energy consumption
• Changes in energy metabolism as a therapeutic treatment for neurological/neuropsychiatric disorders
• Nutrition and neurodevelopment
• Brain structural and physiological changes evoked by personalized dietary regimes
Whilst there is a growing body of work studying the effects of energy metabolism on the functions of the brain, there are still many unanswered questions on the mechanisms that underlie these changes and their potential role in disease prevention.
This Research Topic aims to bring about new findings on the cellular and molecular processes that underlie changes in the brain energy metabolism and how this can impact brain function in health and disease. This Topic is open to basic research studies in animal models and in humans. We welcome original research, timely reviews, methods and perspective pieces based on the following, but not limited to:
• Cellular and/or molecular mechanisms shaped by changes in brain energy consumption
• Changes in energy metabolism as a therapeutic treatment for neurological/neuropsychiatric disorders
• Nutrition and neurodevelopment
• Brain structural and physiological changes evoked by personalized dietary regimes
Keywords: cellular mechanisms, molecular mechanisms, illness, neurodevelopment
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
