108 MARTIN G. LARRABEE AND PAUL HOROWICZ 



the recovery time varies with the metabolic rate and with the survival time, all 

 of which would fit in with that same general notion. 



Discussion 



Led by R. G. Grenell 



One of the things that I am rather impressed with about these papers is 

 that they have strengthened a belief of my own — and one held by many 

 others — that the more experiments we do the worse our confusion. Usually 

 most of what we have believed turns out not to be so. This has been a prob- 

 lem of mine for some time. I think it started with the experiments that Dr. 

 Davies and I did some 5-6 years ago (reported in Federation Proceedings), in 

 which we discovered that our faith in glucose had been misplaced, and that the 

 brain, at least for certain phases of its work, could get along without any ex- 

 ogenous glucose for several hours. This disturbing observation was followed 

 shortly by another; namely, that narcotics in just enough concentration to 

 anesthetize (i.e., low concentration) do not significantly decrease the rate of 

 oxygen consumption. At least this particular part of the oxidative machine 

 was not what it had been thought to be. Before long it got so that we weren't 

 sure we could find anything that was what it used to be. 



In more recent days we have come to believe that uncoupling, too, may not 

 be all we may have been led to believe. 



These observations leave us in a state of extreme anxiety, and we have begun 

 to look for some sort of correlation we could make that might explain a number 

 of the factors being talked about this afternoon. One of the first questions of 

 interest here is that of the differential biochemistry of cells of the central nervous 

 system. Can we relate chemical structures to integrated activity? Further, can 

 we localize the structures which are integral to these processes? When we talk 

 about molecular structure, is there any identification of the structure within 

 the cell, in the membranes, or outside the cell? Such questions lead to attempts 

 to separate chemical effects in these areas and their relationship to activity. 

 Part of the attack in this vein is demonstrated by the difference in approach of 

 Dr. Fischer's work and that of Dr. Larrabee. Another type of approach is one 

 in which we have used studies of narcotic action to give us a certain kind of 

 information concerning the common mechanisms by which neurons react. 



The question of common reactive or adaptive mechanisms is one of great 

 interest. Some years ago, Dr. Ebbe Hoff and I spent some time reviewing 

 the literature relative to structural alterations in the central nervous system 

 in a series of conditions including anoxia, anemia, carbon monoxide poison- 

 ing, anesthesia poisoning, hypoglycemia, vitamin deficiency, etc. "We were 

 able to observe that, in general, such stresses evoked similar lesions in simi- 

 lar areas of the brain. There appear to be certain inherent properties of re- 



