This downward adjustment of synaptic currents occurs, at least partly, during sleep (see below). Synaptic plasticity can also offer energetic savings to synaptic transmission. Long-term depression of the cerebellar parallel fiber to Purkinje cell synapse, used to learn motor patterns, ultimately results in ∼85% of the synapses producing no postsynaptic current (Isope and Barbour, 2002). The existence of silent synapses is predicted theoretically for optimal

storage of information (Brunel et al., 2004) but also provides a massive decrease in the amount of energy used synaptically (Howarth et al., 2010). Increasingly, sleep is thought to play an energetically restorative role in the brain (Scharf et al., 2008). This theory coincides with most people’s experience of sleep but has found direct physiological support only recently. Dworak et al. selleck screening library (2010) reported that during sleep there is a transient increase in ATP level in cells of awake-active regions of the brain. This was suggested to fuel restorative biosynthetic processes in cells that, during the day, must use all of their energy on electrical and chemical signaling. This implies an energy consumption trade-off:

a high use of ATP on synapses during awake ISRIB research buy periods is balanced by more ATP being allocated to other tasks during sleep. Energy use in the awake state also increases due to synaptic potentiation. In the awake state (compared to sleep), GluR1 subunits of AMPA receptors are present at a higher level and in a more phosphorylated state (consistent with an increased synaptic strength), synaptic currents and spine numbers increase, and evoked neuronal responses are larger (Vyazovskiy et al., 2008; Maret et al., 2011). These changes

are reversed during sleep, presumably because of homeostatic Sodium butyrate plasticity as discussed above. Thus, sleep is essential for adjusting synaptic energy use. Finally, we turn to the pathological effects of disruptions to synaptic energetics. Since synapses account for the majority of energy use in the brain, any disorder of mitochondrial trafficking or function will inevitably affect synapses. Reciprocally, excessive glutamatergic synaptic transmission raises neuronal [Ca2+]i, which depolarizes mitochondria, reducing their ATP production and in extremis leading to cytochrome C release and the initiation of apoptosis. Increasingly, one or other of these mitochondrial dysfunctions is reported as contributing to brain disorders. Mitochondrial dysfunction may contribute to neuronal damage in Parkinson’s disease (Youle and Narendra, 2011). Dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra consume a significant amount of ATP to reverse the Ca2+ influx that mediates their pacemaking activity (Puopolo et al., 2007). Producing this ATP leads to oxidative stress (Guzman et al., 2010) that can uncouple or depolarize mitochondria.