Elsevier

Neuroscience

Volume 150, Issue 4, 19 December 2007, Pages 789-795
Neuroscience

Behavioural neuroscience
Intense exercise increases adenosine concentrations in rat brain: Implications for a homeostatic sleep drive

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2007.09.062Get rights and content

Abstract

Intense exercise and sleep deprivation affect the amount of homeostatically regulated slow wave sleep in the subsequent sleep period. Since brain energy metabolism plays a decisive role in the regulation of behavioral states, we determined the concentrations of nucleotides and nucleosides: phosphocreatine, creatine, ATP, ADP, AMP, adenosine, and inosine after moderate and exhaustive treadmill exercise as well as 3 and 5 h of sleep deprivation and sleep in the rat brain using the freeze-clamp technique.

High intensity exercise resulted in a significant increase of the sleep-promoting substance adenosine. In contrast, following sleep, inosine and adenosine levels declined considerably, with an accompanied increase of ADP after 3 h and ATP after 5 h. Following 3 h and 5 h sleep deprivation, ADP and ATP did not differ significantly, whereas inosine increased during the 3 and 5-h period. The concentrations of AMP, creatine and phosphocreatine remained unchanged between experimental conditions.

The present results are in agreement with findings from other authors and suggest that depletion of cerebral energy stores and accumulation of the sleep promoting substance adenosine after high intensity exercise may play a key role in homeostatic sleep regulation, and that sleep may play an essential role in replenishment of high-energy compounds.

Section snippets

Animals

All procedures were conducted in accordance with the European Union Guidelines for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and undertaken with the approval of the regional administration of the governmental body. All experiments conformed to named local guidelines on the ethical use of laboratory animals and were conducted to minimize the number of laboratory animals and their suffering. Male adult Wistar rats (70 days old), weighing 376.7±72.3 (sd) g, were housed under constant temperature (22

Metabolite changes after exercise

Nucleotide and nucleoside concentrations in the rat brain were measured after “lights-on” (baseline), 3 h and 5 h (control) of sleep, moderate and intense exercise as well as after 3 h and 5 h SD. Resting values (control) were defined after 5 h of undisrupted sleep.

After high intensity exercise adenosine and inosine levels were significantly elevated (ANOVA F=5.67; P=0.0003 and F=8.43; P=0.00001) and reached 229.04% and 425.21% of the control levels respectively. Only the intense, not moderate

Discussion

The present study demonstrates that, sleep and SD conditions, in contrast to intense physical exercise increase total brain adenosine and inosine concentrations. Undisrupted sleep resulted in significantly elevated ADP and ATP concentrations as well as a progressive decline of inosine and adenosine in a duration-dependent manner. SD (3 h and 5 h) did not affect brain ATP and adenosine concentrations significantly. However a great increase of inosine between the 3- and 5-h deprivation period was

Acknowledgments

We thank Ute Laudenbach-Leschowsky and Katja Teschner for technical assistance. This work was supported by the Krupp-von-Halbach Foundation and the Oertel Foundation.

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