A Long-term Ketogenic Diet in Young and Aged Rats Has Dissociable Effects on Prelimbic Cortex and CA3 Ensemble Activity

Introduction: Age-related cognitive decline has been linked to distinct patterns of cellular dysfunction in the prelimbic cortex (PL) and the CA3 subregion of the hippocampus. Because higher cognitive functions require both structures, selectively targeting a neurobiological change in one region, at the expense of the other, is not likely to restore normal behavior in older animals. One change with age that both the PL and CA3 share, however, is a reduced ability to utilize glucose, which can produce aberrant neural activity patterns.

Methods: The current study used a ketogenic diet (KD) intervention, which reduces the brain's reliance on glucose, and has been shown to improve cognition, as a metabolic treatment for restoring neural ensemble dynamics in aged rats. Expression of the immediate-early genes and 1a were used to quantify the neural ensembles that were active in the home cage prior to behavior, during a working memory/biconditional association task, and a continuous spatial alternation task.

Results: Aged rats on the control diet had increased activity in CA3 and less ensemble overlap in PL between different task conditions than did the young animals. In the PL, the KD was associated with increased activation of neurons in the superficial cortical layers, establishing a clear link between dietary macronutrient content and frontal cortical activity. The KD did not lead to any significant changes in CA3 activity.

Discussion: These observations suggest that the availability of ketone bodies may permit the engagement of compensatory mechanisms in the frontal cortices that produce better cognitive outcomes.