Excessive nitric oxide (NO) production is known to damage mitochondrial proteins and the autophagy repair pathway and so can potentially contribute to neurotoxicity. Accordingly, we hypothesized that protection against protein damage from reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (ROS/RNS) under conditions of low oxygen by the autophagy pathway in neurons would be impaired by NO and enhance bioenergetic dysfunction. Rat primary cortical neurons maintained the same basal cellular respiration in hypoxia as normoxia, whereas NO exposed cells exhibited a gradual decrease in mitochondrial respiration in hypoxia. Upon reoxygenation, the respiration in NO treated cells did not recover to pre-hypoxic levels. Hypoxia-reoxygenation in the presence of NO was associated with inhibition of autophagy and the inability to recovery during reoxygenation was exacerbated by the inhibitor of autophagy, 3-methyladenine. The effects of hypoxia could be recapitulated by inhibiting glycolytic flux under normoxic conditions. Under both normoxic and hypoxic conditions NO exposure induced immediate stimulation of glycolysis but prolonged NO exposure, associated with irreversible inhibition of mitochondrial respiration in hypoxia, inhibited glycolysis. Importantly, we found that NO inhibited basal respiration under normoxic conditions only when glucose was absent from the media or glycolysis was inhibited by 2-deoxy-D-glucose, revealing a novel NO-dependent mechanism for the inhibition of mitochondrial respiration which is modulated by glycolysis. Taken together these data suggest an oxygen-dependent interaction between mitochondrial respiration, glycolysis and autophagy in protecting neuronal cells exposed to NO. Importantly, they indicate that mitochondrial dysfunction is intimately linked to a failure of glycolytic flux induced by exposure to NO. In addition, these studies provide new insights into understanding how autophagy and NO may play an interactive role in neuroinflammation-induced cellular damage which is pertinent to our understanding of the pathology neurodegenerative diseases in which excessive NO is generated.