Their studies, reported in Current Biology on August 11, show that when intense cognitive work is prolonged for several hours, it causes potentially toxic byproducts to build up in the part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This in turn alters your control over decisions, so you shift toward low-cost actions requiring no effort or waiting as cognitive fatigue sets in, the researchers explain.“Influential theories suggested that fatigue is a sort of illusion cooked up by the brain to make us stop whatever we are doing and turn to a more gratifying activity,” says Mathias Pessiglione of Pitié-Salpêtrière University in Paris, France. “But our findings show that cognitive work results in a true functional alteration—accumulation of noxious substances—so fatigue would indeed be a signal that makes us stop working but for a different purpose: to preserve the integrity of brain functioning.”
I'll wager that further study eventually uncovers that low levels of alcohol consumption tend to dissolve and clear these toxic products, allowing the brain to continue hard work for longer. This explains why creative geniuses are often inclined to drinking at low levels but for long periods of the day; many of them, like Winston Churchill, prove to be quite heavy drinkers eventually.
This feature of human nature is well enough known to have drawn satire.
Science will catch up.
8 comments:
Nicotine is also a stimulant delivered quickly and directly to the forebrain by smoking. The effect is temporary but i am very familiar with it. The picture of writers or beat reporters sitting down to a typewriter and lighting a cig is based on reality: it's time to focus.
That is not clearing noxious substances but overruling them, of course.
I've found that eating helps me concentrate.
creative geniuses are often inclined to drinking at low levels but for long periods of the day
It's also the case that, until recently as civilization hygiene goes, creative geniuses, along with everyone else who could manage it, drank watered-down wine throughout the day because straight water tended to be laden with illness-inducing bugs.
It's also the case that the same inhibition-reducing capability attributed to alcohol in other venues also reduces inhibitions against new ideas.
And, of course, that musical classic In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida was written during a drunken haze over the course of a single evening.
Eric Hines
james ... kinda similar, I find that if I'm fatigued from a bad night of sleep I tend to graze all day.
...not clearing noxious substances but overruling them...
That's another possibility here too, AVI. That's how 'hair of the dog' works as you probably know. It's not that the new alcohol clears out what's hurting you; it's just that it's the liver's clearing process for the old chemicals that causes you pain, and the new alcohol becomes the liver's priority. So it stops clearing the partly-transformed old toxins while it processes the new toxins, and you hurt less.
It may be that the solvent qualities work as I think, though; the 'inebriati' joke is suggestive. Lots of things really do work better if you're just slightly drinking, even though doing it all the time can lead to long term health issues.
Is this the moment to discuss the drinkers-and-thinkers party called "the Symposium" again?
I’m game; but if you want Plato on hangovers, Charmides is the one.
@ E Hines - in medieval times at least, people drank plenty of water. The myth of water avoidance is widely believed, but the evidence isn't there. Here's one example, but there are others.
https://gizmodo.com/no-medieval-people-didnt-drink-booze-to-avoid-dirty-w-1533442326
Post a Comment