Baseline brain energy supports the state of consciousness.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America July 7, 2009 Robert G Shulman, Fahmeed Hyder, Douglas L Rothman
An individual, human or animal, is defined to be in a conscious state empirically by the behavioral ability to respond meaningfully to stimuli, whereas the loss of consciousness is defined by unresponsiveness. PET measurements of glucose or oxygen consumption show a widespread approximately 45% reduction in cerebral energy consumption with anesthesia-induced loss of consciousness. Because...