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How Much Energy Does It Take to Think?
Studies of neural metabolism reveal our brain’s effort to keep us alive and the evolutionary constraints that sculpted our most complex organ.
Sharna Jamadar, a neuroscientist at Monash University in Australia, and her colleagues reviewed research from her lab and others around the world to estimate the metabolic cost of cognition — that is, how much energy it takes to power the human brain. This study of neural metabolism, when tied to research on the dynamics of the brain’s electrical firing, points to the competing evolutionary forces that explain the limitations, scope and efficiencies of our cognitive capabilities. This network is involved in the mental experience of drifting between past, present and future scenarios — what you might make for dinner, a memory from last week, some pain in your hip.
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