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Reply to Burton

International Journal of Obesity volume 35, page 1140 (2011)Cite this article

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Dr Burton responds to our paper ‘Brain size, body size and longevity’ by starting his reasoning with the presumption that the ratio of body metabolism to brain metabolism would probably have correlated strongly with the ratio of body mass to brain mass. This might indeed be true within a species (for example, Homo sapiens). However, this presumption does not hold true for the subphylum of vertebrata ranging in size and metabolism from goldfishes to elephants. It has long been known that vertebrate brain metabolism is strictly proportional (that is, isometric) to body energy metabolism,1, 2 whereas the association between body mass and brain mass has been found to be nonlinear (an exponential function with an exponent close to 0.7).3, 4 Because of this contradiction, we cannot agree with Dr Burton's conclusions, which might have arisen from his reasoning.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Clinic 1, University of Luebeck, Luebeck, Germany

    A Peters & B Kubera

  2. Institute of Computational Mathematics, Technical University Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

    D Langemann

  3. Institute of Human Nutrition and Food Science, Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    A Bosy-Westphal & M J Müller

Authors
  1. A Peters
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  2. B Kubera
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  3. D Langemann
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  4. A Bosy-Westphal
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  5. M J Müller
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Correspondence to A Peters.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Peters, A., Kubera, B., Langemann, D. et al. Reply to Burton. Int J Obes 35, 1140 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/ijo.2010.266

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