{"id":12128,"date":"2022-07-18T10:32:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-18T17:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=12128"},"modified":"2022-07-20T10:34:39","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T17:34:39","slug":"brain-on-idle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2022\/07\/18\/brain-on-idle\/","title":{"rendered":"Brain On Idle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

from WIRED<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brain Has a \u2018Low-Power Mode\u2019 That Blunts Our Senses<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

by ALLISON WHITTEN<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"battery
When food has been in short supply for a long time and body weight falls below a critical threshold, the brain reduces its energy consumption by changing how it processes information.ILLUSTRATION: MATT CURTIS\/QUANTA MAGAZINE<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

WHEN OUR PHONES\u00a0and computers run out of power, their glowing screens go dark and they die a sort of digital death. But switch them to low-power mode to conserve energy and they cut expendable operations to keep basic processes humming along until their batteries can be recharged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our energy-intensive brain needs to keep its lights on too. Brain cells depend primarily on steady deliveries of the sugar glucose, which they convert to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to fuel their information processing. When we\u2019re a little hungry, our brain usually doesn\u2019t change its energy consumption much. But given that humans and other animals have historically faced the threat of long periods of starvation, sometimes seasonally, scientists have wondered whether brains might have their own kind of low-power mode for emergencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, in a paper\u00a0published in\u00a0Neuron<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in January, neuroscientists in\u00a0Nathalie Rochefort<\/a>\u2019s lab at the University of Edinburgh have revealed an energy-saving strategy in the visual systems of mice. They found that when mice were deprived of sufficient food for weeks at a time\u2014long enough for them to lose 15 to 20 percent of their typical healthy weight\u2014neurons in the visual cortex reduced the amount of ATP used at their synapses by a sizable 29 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[ click to continue reading at WIRED<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from WIRED The Brain Has a \u2018Low-Power Mode\u2019 That Blunts Our Senses Neuroscientists uncovered an energy-saving mode in vision-system neurons that works at the cost of being able to see fine-grained details. by ALLISON WHITTEN WHEN OUR PHONES\u00a0and computers run out of power, their glowing screens go dark and they die a sort of digital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weirdness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}