‚Science Advances‘ published our paper in which we asked: "Where does all the sugar go in the brain?" doi.org/10.1126/scia... Short answer and 4 main findings in 🧵 below. #funding: ERC_Research #neuroskyence - ThreadSky

vavatin.bsky.social • 428 days ago

‚Science Advances‘ published our paper in which we asked:

"Where does all the sugar go in the brain?"
https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adi7632

Short answer and 4 main findings in 🧵 below.
#funding: ERC_Research
#neuroskyence

Comments

paulallen.ca•427 days ago

Nice work. Summarized clearly. Shared generously. Thanks.

vavatin.bsky.social•427 days ago

thanks Paul, highly appreciated 🙏

vavatin.bsky.social•428 days ago

Short answer: It’s not the size of the brain that makes us human; but we spend excessive energy on slow, chemical signaling in evolutionarily expanded regions of the brain.

vavatin.bsky.social•428 days ago

Brain Imaging Setup: We measured the glucose metabolism throughout the functional connectome of the human brain (replication in three datasets using simultaneous PET/MR imaging).

1. Energy demand linearly scales with the degree of functional connectivity in individual brains.

vavatin.bsky.social•428 days ago

2. Up to 67% higher energetic costs in evolutionarily most expanded brain regions.

vavatin.bsky.social•428 days ago

3. Higher energy demand is associated with slow, chemical signaling of neuromodulators, such as serotonin or dopamine (transcriptomics and molecular imaging data).

vavatin.bsky.social•428 days ago

4. Regions with higher energy demand are involved in complex cognition, like inhibitory and memory processing, or reading.

lenamblott.bsky.social•108 days ago

Fascinating stuff! can't seem to find this info in the paper but did you use in-scanner behavioural tasks to identify the functional regions you mention here, or are they based on locations from the literature?

vavatin.bsky.social•428 days ago

Gabriel has collated all data and analysis code for you here:
data: https://doi.org/10.18112/openneuro.ds004513.v1.0.3
code: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.10084429

infotainment.bsky.social•427 days ago

This aligns with cognitive and educational psychology research showing that faces, scenes, multisensory processing are beneficial for memory and learning. Or is that a bridge too far?

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