The Hungry Brain: Why Thinking Is So Expensive, and What Happens When Food Runs Low
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Your brain weighs about as much as a small melon, yet it eats like a teenager. Even when you are sitting still and thinking about nothing in particular, it burns through energy at a rate that no other organ of its size comes close to. This single fact, that the brain is metabolically expensive, turns out to be one of the most important constraints in all of neuroscience. It shapes how neurons are built, how they signal, how we learn, and, as recent work suggests, how the brain rations its own performance when food becomes scarce.