Martin Picard's research reframes mental illness as an energy problem, not just a chemistry one

Martin Picard’s work on cellular energy keeps arriving at the same uncomfortable place: the standard neurochemical story of mental illness may be missing the bigger mechanism. Picard points to an emerging field he describes as “metabolic psychiatry,” where researchers understand mental illnesses “as energetic disorders of the brain” rather than as purely chemical imbalances. The reframe is not cosmetic. It changes what you look for and, potentially, what you treat.

if you inject people with a signal of energetic stress, lactate, you can trigger a panic attack Martin Picard

The lactate finding is the sharpest piece of evidence he cites. Injecting people with lactate, a signal the body sends when it is under energetic stress, can trigger a full panic attack. That is a physiological pathway from cellular energy distress to psychiatric symptom, with no neurochemistry required as the first domino.

The same logic extends to dementia. Picard argues the amyloid plaque hypothesis is overstated, noting that people can have zero protein deposits in the brain and still present with full-blown Alzheimer’s. He describes the disease as a condition in which the brain burns less energy and struggles to absorb glucose as symptoms appear. Taken together, the picture Picard is building is one where the brain’s energy supply, not just its molecular signals, sits at the center of some of medicine’s hardest problems. Whether metabolic psychiatry earns mainstream acceptance remains an open question, but the mechanistic thread running through his work is specific enough to take seriously.