Looking at the brain with a geologist's "eye"

14. Using a geologist's imaging tool, researchers have made unprecedented high-resolution images of how carbon atoms from glucose are integrated into brain cells, providing new insight and opening new doors into the fate of glucose in the brain. Glucose - a form of sugar - fuels the brain. But how it goes from the blood to the brain cells and where it ultimately winds up are not yet well understood. Harnessing the power of a special kind of microscope that was used for the first time to image metabolism of the brain, researchers from EPFL, the Nestlé Health Institute, and the University of Lausanne have tracked the fate of individual carbon atoms deep into the brain's neurons and astrocytes. Their work, published in the Journal of Chemical Neuroanatomy , paves the way for a better understanding of how healthy and diseased brains metabolize glucose, which in the future could contribute to the development of new methods to diagnose and treat neurological diseases. "Half of the glucose we have in our blood is consumed by our brain; this we know.