Energy-hungry neuron types do not sit closer to capillaries: a preregistered whole-brain test in MERFISH mouse brains

Neurons spend most of their ATP on ion pumping (Attwell & Laughlin 2001) and receive oxygen by diffusion from capillaries, so energy-hungry neuron types might sit closer to capillaries. In whole-brain MERFISH atlases (Yao et al. 2023; Zhang et al. 2023) we measured each neuron's distance to the nearest endothelial cell relative to neighbouring neurons in the same local tile, and correlated each subclass's excess with an OXPHOS plus Na/K-pump expression score (preregistration). Across 239 subclasses there was no relation: rho = -0.018960304 (CI -0.14959145 to 0.11132168; p = 0.7770223), with no consistent sign across the replication brains. Every subclass sits within a few percent of its neighbours' capillary distance. Decision: refute.