{"id":543328,"date":"2010-04-26T09:02:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-26T13:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5587346.post-5902110032993954077"},"modified":"2010-04-26T11:29:58","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T15:29:58","slug":"do-knowledge-workers-burn-more-cerebral-calories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/543328","title":{"rendered":"Do knowledge workers burn more cerebral calories?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our brains burn a lot of the calories we eat [1]. So are knowledge workers working out?<\/p>\n

Alas, probably not …<\/p>\n

Appraising the brain’s energy budget<\/a> (PNAS 2002)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… In the average adult human, the brain represents about 2% of the body weight. Remarkably, despite its relatively small size, the brain accounts for about 20% of the oxygen and, hence, calories consumed by the body (1). This high rate of metabolism is remarkably constant despite widely varying mental and motoric activity…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/a>
Later articles<\/a> suggest that while brains use a lot of calories, and are thus a very <\/i>expensive evolutionary development, they don’t use the calories for thinking. Brain calories are primarily consumed in “intrinsic activites” unrelated to environmental stimulus — presumably maintenance functions of some sort.<\/p>\n

So we knowledge workers don’t get any caloric credit for thinking, and since we usually think while sitting (very bad<\/a>) we’re really pro blubber.<\/p>\n

[1] We also know human brains are smaller and probably more efficient than they used to be. Of course, so are computers.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Update<\/b>: I suppose memory formation might be energy intensive, so maybe forming more memories could burn calories?<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our brains burn a lot of the calories we eat [1]. So are knowledge workers working out? Alas, probably not … Appraising the brain’s energy budget (PNAS 2002) … In the average adult human, the brain represents about 2% of the body weight. Remarkably, despite its relatively small size, the brain accounts for about 20% […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":711,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-543328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/711"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}