Unlike the mechanism of physical fatigue, the cause of cognitive fatigue has been poorly understood.
Previous accounts were incomplete. One of the most widely known, the biological one, draws from what is known about muscular fatigue. It posits that exerting cognitive control uses up energy in the form of glucose. At the end of a day spent intensely cogitating, the brain is metaphorically running on fumes. The problem with this version of events is that the energy cost associated with thinking is minimal.
In other words, cognitive work results in chemical changes in the brain, which present behaviourally as fatigue. This, therefore, is a signal to stop working in order to restore balance to the brain. In their new paper in, the researchers describe an experiment they undertook to explain how all this happens.
Periodically, throughout the experiment, participants were asked to make decisions that could reveal their cognitive fatigue. They might be asked whether they would want to earn €50 for cycling on an exercise bike for 30 minutes at power level six or €37 for 30 minutes at power level two . Participants who were assigned the more challenging cognitive-control tasks were more likely to opt for the low-cost, low-reward options, especially towards the end of the six hours.
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