http://mindhacks.com/2009/03/17/wiring-and-plumbing-in-the-brain/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Mon, 20 May 2013 15:51:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2009/03/17/wiring-and-plumbing-in-the-brain/#comment-5884 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:32:50 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/wiring-and-plumbing-in-the-brain/#comment-5884 Actually, this strikes me as a particularly stupid metaphor. Given that water flow in a house, in the vast majority of cases, has little to do with power generation, the analogy is very poor. Since blood flow does indeed deliver glucose which, in the end, neurons need to fire the comparison is, at best, irrelevant.
A more apt metaphor along these lines can be seen in, for example, my house which is heated by steam heat. If I were to monitor the water flow in a roughly 3m x 3m x 3m cube in my basement I could estimate my heating requirements quite accurately.
Now, the hypothesis may certainly be suspect but this argument doesn’t really advance its cause much. This: “Needless to say, it’s important to understand the exact relation between the operation of the neurons and blood flow, because brain scanning studies typically measure blood flow to infer the working of neurons and hence the relationship to cognitive or mental processing.”
on the other hand, is correct (needless to say indeed!).

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2009/03/17/wiring-and-plumbing-in-the-brain/#comment-5883 Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:12:54 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/wiring-and-plumbing-in-the-brain/#comment-5883 Thanks for this. Terrific metaphor which will hopefully deflate some of the more sensationalist claims being made.

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