Our 'Selfish brains' take priority while competing with muscle power

Updated:8 years ago

New Delhi, Oct 24 (ANI): Metabolically, human brains are way expensive. They take a lot of energy to run and keeping our sophisticated grey matter going comes at an evolutionary cost. A new study has found that an immediate trade-off occurs inside us when we have to think fast and work hard at the same time i.e. our 'selfish brain' is always prioritised over the rest of our body. According to the researchers, the findings suggest "preferential allocation of glucose to the brain," which they argue is likely to be an evolved trait -- as prioritising quick thinking over fast moving, for example, may have helped our species survive and thrive. Scientists from the Cambridge University’s PAVE (Phenotypic Adaptability, Variation and Evolution) research group conducted a test on 62 male students drawn from the university's elite rowing crews, with an average age of 21. The rowers were made to perform two different tasks - one memory, a three minute word recall test, and one physical, a three minute power test on a rowing machine. They then performed both tasks at once, with individual scores compared to those from previous tests. As expected, the challenge of rowing and remembering at the same time reduced both physical and mental performance. However, the researchers significantly found that change in recall was less than the change in power output.

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Our 'Selfish brains' take priority while competing with muscle power

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