A research project at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff is studying brain metabolism to learn about the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
The effort is led by Travis Gibbons, an assistant professor in NAU’s Department of Biological Sciences, and funded by a grant from the Arizona Alzheimer’s Foundation. It is looking at how brain metabolism uses glucose.
“The brain is like a muscle,” Gibbons said in a Sept. 24, 2025, release from NAU on the study. “It needs fuel to do work, and its gasoline is blood glucose. A healthy brain is greedy; it burns through glucose fast. But brain metabolism is slower when you have Alzheimer’s. It can be viewed as a canary in the coal mine in the development of the disease.”