Anant Bahadur Patel1, Vivek Tiwari1, Vaidyanathan Subramanian1
1NMR Microimaging and Spectroscopy, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
Alcohol is known to cause impairment of cognitive, psychological functions and neural activities. Ethanol modulates synaptic transmission in central nervous system upon its binding to NMDA, AMPA and GABAA receptors. The objective of current study was to evaluate the effect of acute alcohol on cerebral metabolism associated with glutamatergic and GABAergic neurons using 13C NMR spectroscopy in conjunction with infusion of [1,6-13C2]glucose in mice. Our findings indicate that acute alcohol treatment selectively impaired glutamatergic TCA cycle and neurotransmitter cycling without any significant change in GABAergic activity.