GLAM: Glycogen-derived Lactate Absorption Map for visual analysis of dense and sparse surface reconstructions of rodent brain structures on desktop systems and virtual environments

Human brain accounts for about one hundred billion neurons, but they cannot work properly without ultrastructural and metabolic support. For this reason, mammalian brains host another type of cells called “glial cells”, whose role is to maintain proper conditions for efficient neuronal function. One type of glial cell, astrocytes, are involved in particular in the metabolic support of neurons, by feeding them with lactate, one byproduct of glucose metabolism that they can take up from blood vessels, and store it under another form, glycogen granules. These energy-storage molecules, whose morphology resembles to spheres with a diameter ranging 10–80 nanometers roughly, can be easily recognized using electron microscopy, the only technique whose resolution is high enough to resolve them. Understanding and quantifying their distribution is of particular relevance for neuroscientists, in order to understand where and when neurons use energy under this form. To answer this question, we devel...