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Neuroimaging study suggests mental exhaustion helps protect the chemical integrity of the brain

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A new study in the journal Current Biology shows that hard cognitive exertion causes glutamate to build up in the prefrontal cortex. According to the latest research, mental exhaustion may function as a neuropsychological mechanism that prevents the accumulation of potentially harmful byproducts of extended cognitive effort. “Nobody knows what mental fatigue is, how it is generated and why we feel it,” said study author Antonius Wiehler, a member of the Motivation, Brain and Behavior Lab at Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. “It has remained a mystery despite more than a century of scientific research. Machines can do cognitive tasks continuously without fatigue, the brain is different and we wanted to understand how and why. Mental fatigue has important consequences: for economic decisions, for management at work, for education at school, for clinical cure, etc.”Mental fatigue 40 participants' brain imaging data were analyzed for the new study. The two cognitive control tasks used by the researchers to produce mental exhaustion. The first group of participants finished an easy version of the activities, whereas the second group finished versions of the two tasks that were noticeably harder. However, the tasks were finished by both groups in the same amount of time. The exercises were carried out alternately by participants inside and outside of a brain scanner. After finishing the tasks, both groups expressed a similar level of subjective exhaustion. However, after completing the challenging cognitive activities, participants' pupils shrank on a subsequent economic decision-making exercise. Additionally, they showed a stronger preference for immediate benefits over those that required more waiting or effort to receive. Importantly, they also had larger glutamate concentrations in the prefrontal cortex of the brain's synapses. “When intense cognitive work is prolonged for several hours, some potentially toxic byproducts of neural activity accumulate in the prefrontal cortex. This alters the control over decisions, which are shifted towards low-cost actions (no effort, no wait), as cognitive fatigue emerges (note that we are talking mental exhaustion here, not drowsiness),” Wiehler told PsyPost.

By Awanish Kumar

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