Regional cerebral glucose utilization measured with the 2--[ 14C] deoxyglucose technique: its use in mapping functional activity in the nervous system.

The results of studies with the [ 14C] deoxyglucose technique unequivocally establish that functional activity in specific components of the central nervous system is, as in other tissues, closely coupled to the local rate of energy metabolism. Stimulation of functional activity increases the local rate of glucose utilization; reduced functional activity depresses it. These changes are so profound that they can be visualized directly in autoradiographic representations of local tissue concentrations of [ 14C] deoxyglucose-6-phosphate. Indeed, the existence of such evoked metabolic responses to experimentally induced alterations in local functional activity, together with the ability to visualize them by the [ 14C] deoxyglucose method, has become the basis of a potent technique for the mapping of functional pathways in the central nervous system (Kennedy et al., 1975, 1976; Plum et al., 1976).