Do Photons Power the Brain?

Science · Published

Do Photons Power the Brain? · 1:56 · Intellect Plus

In short: Photons trigger vision in the retina, but the brain runs on chemical energy from glucose and oxygen delivered by the blood, with only an indirect link back to sunlight through plants.

A 1:56 short film in the series “Photon and Brain”, narrated by intellect_voice_01.

Sources used in this film: Trends in Neurosciences (Elsevier), via PubMed Central, U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Sugar for the brain: the role of glucose in physiological and pathological brain function”; PLoS One (Blazey et al., Washington University School of Medicine), hosted on PubMed Central by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “A systematic meta-analysis of oxygen-to-glucose and oxygen-to-carbohydrate ratios in the resting human brain”; Frontiers in Molecular Neuroscience (via PubMed Central, U.S. National Library of Medicine), “Brain Energy and Oxygen Metabolism: Emerging Role in Normal Function and Disease”; University of California San Diego, Physics 1C course lecture notes (2011), “lecture 15 notes”; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Department of Physics (PHYS 214 course notes), “unit4.pdf”; BioEssays (article by Reingruber, Holcman and Fain, 2015), hosted on PubMed Central by the US National Library of Medicine, “How rods respond to single photons: Key adaptations of a G-protein cascade that enable vision at the physical limit of perception”; Journal of Biological Chemistry (American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology), hosted on PubMed Central by the U.S. National Library of Medicine / NIH; authors Vadim Y. Arshavsky and Mari…, “Photoreceptor Signaling: Supporting Vision across a Wide Range of Light Intensities”; Weizmann Institute of Science (hosting a chapter of Principles of Neural Science, by Marc Tessier-Lavigne), “Principles of Neural Science”; PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science), “Regulation of rod photoreceptor function by farnesylated G-protein γ-subunits”; Smithsonian Science Education Center, “What is Photosynthesis”; Smithsonian Magazine, “How Did Plants Develop Photosynthesis?”; UK Dementia Research Institute (UK DRI), listing a paper by D Attwell and S B Laughlin in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow & Metabolism, “An energy budget for signaling in the grey matter of the brain.”; Journal of Neuroscience Research (review by Chamberlain and Sheng, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH), hosted on PubMed Central by the U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Mechanisms for the maintenance and regulation of axonal energy supply”; Current Opinion in Neurobiology (via PubMed Central, U.S. National Library of Medicine); authors at University of California San Diego, “Powerhouse of the Mind: Mitochondrial Plasticity at the Synapse”.

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