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Were they getting enough glucose in addition to the aspartame? The article didn’t make it clear whether we’re seeing the effects of aspartame or just hypoglycemia.

The liver will happily make enough glucose for the human brain from fat and protein, let alone the mouse brain (gluconeogenesis). It's not true that the human brain requires glucose, just a couple of cell lines (obligate glucovores), like red blood cells and some parts of the eye. The rest of the body, including the brain, can use ketones derived from fat, muscles can use triglycerides directly, in fact as we age the brain preferentially uses ketones. Here mouse models fail because they're evolved as primarily carbovores (grains etc, although they do eat (low fat) insects for extra protein) and really, really hard to get into ketosis, while humans drop into it with 12 hours fasting. Which makes this study an interesting datum, but inconclusive (and likely false in detail) in humans. That said, seems like a no brainer to drop artificial sweeteners and limit sugar to me, evolutionarily we got a big burst at the end of summer (fruit) which we used to fatten up for winter and little the rest of the year.

TLDR: “Mice lie and monkeys exaggerate.”

Mouse metabolism is nothing like human metabolism. Over reliance on mouse models has wasted billions and decades in science, and generated bullshit artifacts.

Throughout the experiment, the mice were fed standard chow (SAFE® A03 rodent chow from SAFE), and the control group was provided with normal, unadulterated drinking water, while the aspartame treated group received 0.4 % (w/v) aspartame (Tokyo Chemical Industry, CAS 22839–47–0, purity ≥) three days every two weeks, which equated to an average daily human equivalent dose of approximately 7 mg/kg/day [20]