Not sure what dick head marked sks link off topic but that was a very good presentation. I did not realize the brain used that much energy. That is amazing when you think about it that such a small fraction of the body could use majority of the energy when you consider physically it isn't doing the work of say muscles. It is not off topic because if we can figure out to minimize entropy ie. Enhance efficiency of just energy metabolism of the brain that could be the most powerful nootropic there is.
If our brains depend on energy that much then even relatively minor metabolic errors basically can mentally handicap people extremely. So much for the body mind dichotomy.
Yes, that was a great presentation, I already knew the facts of what she presented, and I think members here should be more aware that energy metabolism of the brain at times can be more important than raw intelligence. People hugely underestimate were endurance in mental tasks can get you. Two of the most succesful people I know, seem to be "very awake" continuously pursuing their goals, for very long hours each day. One of them, a doctor that would go in medical school only by studying continuously for ten or more hours each and every day (seriously with no break at all, comparing to myself he is a kind of a freak). I do not think he is "particularly smart" being very original, or looking all the details of a situation / he is not having much of an emotional intelligence either, but after 30 years of working very long hours in a hospital, making sure ten of thousands of people have a positive impression of him (going out of his way being helpful) and taking extra time to send people (that were not patients of him, he was doing it pro bono) to see the right specialist, he was voted "governor" in my small "state" in my country, from his former patients their relatives and his good reputation. Having knowing him, he is not really extraordinary by any means apart his extraordinary mental endurance.
I looked in the past how mental endurance is mediated and it seems mechanisms of a "safety break" exists in the brain, so it would put a limit of how much time you would spend in a task mentally, how many new neurons would grow and how many calories you would burn when you have them. The mechanism as far I know is unknown (expect a rise in cortisol, after mental extertion that is expected) but if we could hijack it somehow, the extra effort we would spend in a task would push our brains further growing new neurons.
I started a thread a while ago, but I had much brain fog to continue researching it.
http://www.longecity...-for-the-brain/
Xks201, I am sure you know what myostatin is, imagine if we could inhibit chemicals that exist in the brain that function with a similar logic for neurons, were this might led us? The brain is a "lazy bum" as Claude Messier of the University of Ottawa say in my link above, because as I understand it, needs a lot of energy in its resting state, thous making neurons expensive in the long term. Although reading ten hours would not use considerably much energy than say sleeping for ten hours, the neurons you will grow and new connections, by continously using your brain in its extreme, would get expensive in the long term. So having a neuronal myostatin inhibitor "analog for neurons" would help us not die from famine ten years from now due to too many neurons in our brains :P Maybe this is the opposite side of the coin than having a good amount of neurotrophic factors for growing new neurons.
Edited by Strangelove, 04 August 2014 - 02:04 PM.