Glutamate as a neurotransmitter in the healthy brain
By Yun Zhou, N. Danbolt. Journal of neural transmission, 2014
866 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Glutamate is the most abundant free amino acid in the brain and is at the crossroad between multiple metabolic pathways. Considering this, it was a surprise to discover that glutamate has excitatory effects on nerve cells, and that it can excite cells to their death in a process now referred to as “excitotoxicity”. This effect is due to glutamate receptors present on the surface of brain cells. Powerful uptake systems (glutamate transporters) prevent excessive activation of these receptors by continuously removing glutamate from the extracellular fluid in the brain. Further, the blood–brain barrier shields the brain from glutamate in the blood. The highest concentrations of glutamate are found in synaptic vesicles in nerve terminals from where it can be released by exocytosis. In fact, glutamate is the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the mammalian central nervous system. It took, however, a long time to realize that. The present review provides a brief historical description, gives a short overview of glutamate as a transmitter in the healthy brain, and comments on the so-called glutamate–glutamine cycle. The glutamate transporters responsible for the glutamate removal are described in some detail.
Subfields: Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, Cognitive Neuroscience
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0755d37ce89e2c43a7c40f8fb94cccb48de10b08
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In Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience
In Cognitive Neuroscience
Citations in the corpus
- Chronic Glutamate Toxicity in Neurodegenerative Diseases—What is the Evidence? (2015, background): “Since then, its role as an excitatory neurotransmitter as well as its cerebral metabolism have been studied in detail (reviewed by Fonnum, 1984; Hertz, 2006; Marmiroli and Cavaletti, 2012; Zhou and Danbolt, 2014).”