Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: It is becoming widely accepted that psychological dysfunctions that play a role in mental health and psychiatric conditions are influenced by physiological functions in the body, such as glucose metabolism, and environmental factors, such as diet and nutrition. This dissertation tested the hypothesis that impaired glucose metabolism (IGM) and nutrition play a significant role in affective and psychomotor functions through actions on the nervous system. Under this hypothesis, anhedonic and locomotor effects of IGM were examined in male Sprague-Dawley rats using the glucose antimetabolite 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG) injected systemically and infused into the third ventricle. In addition, this thesis tested whether dietary polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) can alter the fatty acid composition of brain regions that mediate metabolic and affective functions. Collectively, this work found that: 1) 2-DG induced an anhedonic state characterized by impaired consummatory responses to nutritional incentive stimuli that was alleviated by stimulating monoaminergic systems; 2) 2-DG administered systemically or in the brain has divergent effects on behaviour and that the aversive effects of IGM may require large systemic changes in glucose metabolism; and 3) dietary PUFA caused region-specific fatty acid remodeling in an adult rat brain in a relatively short period of time. Overall, this work expands our understanding of comorbid affective and metabolic dysfunctions associated with depression, diabetes, obesity, and metabolic syndrome, and supports future research aiming to identify dietary strategies that reduced the risk of developing affective disorders.
Author: Thomas Horman
Language: English
Subfield: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3196615285