Where Is the Oxygen? The Mirage of Non-Oxidative Glucose Consumption During Brain Activity
Avital Schurr · 2025
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Description
Avital Schurr challenges a popular story about brain fuel in this 2025 article. When neurons fire, they burn glucose, and some researchers claim part of that burn skips oxygen entirely, a process they call aerobic glycolysis, trading efficiency for speed.
Schurr argues the evidence points the other way: oxidative metabolism, the oxygen using pathway, powers brain activity. He questions the lactate shuttle picture, in which support cells hand neurons lactate as their main fuel. He also doubts the standard brain scan signal, which tracks blood oxygen, as a measure of tissue oxygen use, since it cannot see oxygen outside blood vessels. The piece asks where the oxygen is if the non-oxidative story were true.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Avital Schurr |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 37 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |