ArticleJournal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism2011
Response to 'comment on recent modeling studies of astrocyte-neuron metabolic interactions': much ado about nothing.
Article in Journal of cerebral blood flow and metabolism : official journal of the International Society of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 56 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
56 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 91 citations in OpenAlex.
- Lactate Changes Quantified by fMRS: A Meta-Analysis.NMR in biomedicine · 2026Pooled it
- Pentose Phosphate Pathway Is Critical for Providing Energy by Bypassing 6-Phosphofructo-1-Kinase (PFK1) During Increased Neuronal Activity.Metabolites · 2026Review
- Activated astrocytes increase dehydroascorbic acid uptake, changing intracellular metabolism and vitamin C recycling and emulating neuropathological conditions.Redox biology · 2026Article
- Adaptive Gene Expression Induced by a Combination of IL-1β and LPS in Primary Cultures of Mouse Astrocytes.Cells · 2025Article
- The relationship between abnormal glucose metabolism and chronic pain.Cell & bioscience · 2025Review
- A Bird's-Eye View of Glycolytic Upregulation in Activated Brain: The Major Fate of Lactate Is Release From Activated Tissue, Not Shuttling to Nearby Neurons.Journal of neurochemistry · 2025Review
- Neuronal Synaptic Communication and Mitochondrial Energetics in Human Health and Disease.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2025Review
- Brain Metabolism in Health and Neurodegeneration: The Interplay Among Neurons and Astrocytes.Cells · 2024Review
- Analysis of Network Models with Neuron-Astrocyte Interactions.Neuroinformatics · 2023Article
- Current Status of Our Understanding for Brain Integrated Functions and its Energetics.Neurochemical research · 2022Article
- Artificial neurovascular network (ANVN) to study the accuracy vs. efficiency trade-off in an energy dependent neural network.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Contributions of synaptic and astrocyte physiology to the anaesthetised encephalogram revealed using a computational model.British journal of anaesthesia · 2021Article
- Voluntary Behavior and Training Conditions ModulateFrontiers in neuroscience · 2021Article
- Astrocyte Bioenergetics and Major Psychiatric Disorders.Advances in neurobiology · 2021Review
- Fueling thought: Management of glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation in neuronal metabolism.The Journal of cell biology · 2018Review
- Defects in Bioenergetic Coupling in Schizophrenia.Biological psychiatry · 2018Review
- Challenges in Reproducibility, Replicability, and Comparability of Computational Models and Tools for Neuronal and Glial Networks, Cells, and Subcellular Structures.Frontiers in neuroinformatics · 2018Article
- The Regulatory Effects of Acetyl-CoA Distribution in the Healthy and Diseased Brain.Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2018Review
- Computational Models for Calcium-Mediated Astrocyte Functions.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2018Review
- Synaptic Activity Drives a Genomic Program That Promotes a Neuronal Warburg Effect.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
- Comment on
Authors and funding
6 authors at 6 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
For many years, a tenet of cerebral metabolism held that glucose was the obligate energy substrate of the mammalian brain and that neuronal oxidative metabolism represented the majority of this glucose utilization. In 1994, Pellerin and Magistretti formulated the astrocyte-neuron lactate shuttle (ANLS) hypothesis, in which astrocytes, not neurons, metabolized glucose, with subsequent transport of the glycolytically derived lactate to fuel the energy needs of the neuron during neurotransmission. By considering the concentrations and kinetic characteristics of the nutrient transporter proteins, Simpson et al later supported the opposite view, in which lactate flows from neurons to astrocytes, thus leading to the neuron-astrocyte lactate shuttle (NALS). Most recently, a commentary was published in this journal attempting to discredit the NALS. This challenge has stimulated the present response in which we detail the inaccuracies of the commentary and further model several different possibilities. Although our simulations continue to support the predominance of neuronal glucose utilization during activation and neuronal to astrocytic lactate flow, the most important result is that, regardless of the direction of the flow, the overall contribution of lactate to cerebral glucose metabolism is found to be so small as to make this ongoing debate 'much ado about nothing'.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.