Although it constitutes only 2% of the body’s weight, the brain uses approximately 75% of the glucose in the blood, making it the by far the most metabolically expensive organ in the human body (Dunbar, 1998; Kahn, 2005). Glucose (the main type of sugar in the blood) is the primary source of energy for the brain and for the rest of the body. When glucose levels are high, excess glucose is converted and stored as glycogen, which can later be metabolically converted back to glucose and used for energy.
The energy cost is especially high for mental tasks that recruit the “central executive,” or the areas of the brain that regulate cognitive and emotional control. These tasks reduce blood glucose levels at higher rates than other mental tasks which do not recruit the executive (Galliot & Baumeister, 2007). In addition, many tasks which would seem to require self-regulation and executive function suffer when glucose is depleted, and can show improved performance if glucose levels are restored. Such tasks include avoiding prejudiced or stereotype-driven behaviors (Galliot et al., 2009), being willing to help strangers (DeWall, Baumeister, Galliot, & Maner, 2008), attention-tracking performance in a dual-task situation (Scholey, Sunram-Lea, Greer, Elliot, & Kennedy, 2009) memory (Meikle, Riby & Stollery, 2004), complex decision-making (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2008); and persistence in difficult tasks (see Galliot, 2008 for a review).
Most previous studies have used social-cognition procedures that intuitively seem to require executive processing, but that do not have a direct, controlled comparison between executive and nonexecutive-demanding conditions. Therefore, it is not clear whether glucose has its primary effects on ex...
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...gulation, and Word Imagery Value on Human Memory. Behavioral Neuroscience, 113, 431-438.
Scholey, A.B., Sunram-Lea, S.I., Greer, J., Elliot, J., & Kennedy, D.O. (2009). Glucose administration prior to a divided attention task improves tracking performance but not word recognition: evidence against differential memory enhancement? Psychopharmacology, 202, 549-558.
Scholey, A.B., Sunram-Lea, S.I., Greer, J., Elliot, J., & Kennedy, D.O. (2009). Glucose enhancement of memory depends on initial thirst. Appetite, 53, 426-429.
Scholey, A.B., Harper, S., Kennedy, D.O. (2001). Cognitive demand and blood glucose. Physiology & Behavior, 73, 585-592.
Sunram-Lea, S.I., Foster, J.K., Durlach, P., & Perez, C. (2002). The effect of retrograde and anterograde glucose administration on memory performance in healthy young adults. Behavioural Brain Research, 134, 505-516.
Hippocampus is a small, curved region, which exists in both hemispheres of the brain and plays a vital role in emotions, learning and acquisition of new information. It also contributes majorly to long term memory, which is permanent information stored in the brain. Although long term memory is the last information that can be forgotten, its impairment has become very common nowadays. The dysfunction is exemplified by many neurological disorders such as amnesia. There are two types of amnesia, anterograde and retrograde. Anterograde amnesia is inability in forming new information, while retrograde refers to the loss of the past memory. As suggested by Cipolotti and Bird (2006), hippocampus’s lesions are responsible for both types of amnesia. According to multiple trace theory, the author suggests that hippocampal region plays a major role in effective retrieving of episodic memory (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). For example, patients with hippocampal damage show extensively ungraded retrograde amnesia (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). They have a difficult time in retrieving information from their non-personal episodic events and autobiographical memory. However, this theory conflicts with standard model of consolidation. The difference between these theories suggests that researchers need to do more work to solve this controversy. Besides retrieving information, hippocampus is also important in obtaining new semantic information, as well as familiarity and recollection (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). For instance, hippocampal amnesic patient V.C shows in ability to acquire new semantic knowledge such as vocabularies and factual concepts (Cipolotti and Bird, 2006). He is also unable to recognize and recall even...
During the year 1889, two researchers, Joseph Von Mering and Oskar Minkowski, discovered the disease that is known today as diabetes. Diabetes is a disease in which the insulin levels (a hormone produced in unique cells called the islets of Langerhans found in the pancreas) in the bloodstream are irregular and therefore affect the way the body uses sugars, as well as other nutrients. Up until the 1920’s, it was known that being diagnosed with diabetes was a death sentence which usually affected “children and adults under 30.” Those who were diagnosed were usually very hungry and thirsty, which are two of the symptoms associated with diabetes. However, no matter how much they ate, their bodies wouldn’t be able to use the nutrients due to the lack of insulin.
Can sugar really make you happy? When sugar is consumed, then the mood will increase. When sugar is consumed, blood sugar peaks. Glucose, a type of sugar, helps provide energy for most cells in the body. Nerve cells are included in that category. Nerve cells take up half of the energy for sugar in the body. Therefore, glucose levels and brain function, like memory and learning, are very closely related. When the body’s glucose levels are low, energy is low. So, when sugar is consumed, then energy levels will increase. Increased energy levels will lead to a happier mood. While doing this controlled experiment, 10 test subjects rated their mood on a scale of 1-5 before and after the consuming the sugar.
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management of real-world memory demands despite profound anterograde amnesia. Journal of Clinical & Experimental Neuropsychology, 30(8), 931-945.
Since memory is a puzzling part in the brain, it has been studied over the years.
Glucose is a sugar that plays a big part in a human’s health and well-being. This sugar is a major source of energy for the body’s brain and cells. The Cells that receive energy from glucose help in the building of the body’s muscle and tissue. Although glucose may be important to the body too much of this sugar can cause a chronic condition called Diabetes. Diabetes, also known as Diabetes mellitus, is a chronic condition that is caused by too much sugar in the blood. This condition can affect all age groups. In fact, in 2010 a survey was taken by the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, on the number of newly diagnosed diabetes. Out of 1,907,000 people: 24.38% were ages 20-44, 55.17% were ages 45-64, and 20.45% were ages 65 and greater. Diabetes is a very serious condition, and it can be deadly if left untreated. This paper will help better educate the reader on the signs and symptoms, the testing process, and the management of diabetes.
These differences turned out to be due to the details of the procedure, they performed separate scans for the actual presented words, and the not presented but related words, and for unrelated new words (Schacter, 2001). Epinephrine and norepinephrine also have shown to improve memory because increase glucose levels in the blood, and they affect the amygdala, which plays a part in emotional memory (Durand, 2005). Neurons in the basolateral amygdala that were activated during a fear conditioning were activated again during memory retrieval of the feared object. The amount of reactivated neurons showed a correlation with the behavior associated of that fear memory; this indicates a correlation between neurons of the amygdala and memory (Scripps, 2007).
Ryan, L., Hatfield, C., Hofstetter, M. (2002). Caffeine Reduces Time of Day Effects on Memory
First, the physiological aspect will be explored. Assuming that eating regulation is controlled primarily by the brain, disturbances could exist in several places: (1) the br...
Gatlin, Latarcha. (2014, Jan. 12). Caffeine has positive effect on memory, Johns Hopkins researchers say. HUB.
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