A new study on tiredness reveals why a day of heavy thinking is so exhausting
Research suggests that a long day of reflection can sometimes seem as exhausting as a day of manual labor.

A long, hard day of thinking can sometimes seem as exhausting as a day of manual labor, and experts think they know why.

A new study has found that people can feel tired after intense mental work because it causes potentially toxic by-products to build up in the prefrontal cortex part of the brain.

This alters a person’s control over decisions, so they switch to actions that require no effort and no waiting as mental fatigue kicks in.

Fatigue is a way of telling the brain to shut down to save itself.

Mathias Pessiglione, from Pitie-Salpetriere University in France, said: “Influential theories have suggested that fatigue is a kind of illusion created by the brain to make us stop whatever we’re doing and move on to a more rewarding activity.

“But our findings show that cognitive work results in a true functional alteration, the accumulation of harmful substances, so fatigue would be a signal that makes us stop working, but with a different purpose: to preserve the integrity of the functioning of the brain. brain”.

The scientists monitored brain chemistry new study on tiredness reveals during a day at work in two groups of people: those who needed to think a lot and those who had relatively easier cognitive tasks.

This alters a person’s control over decisions, so they switch to actions that require no effort or wait for mental exhaustion to set in.

In the first group, they saw signs of fatigue, including reduced pupil dilation, and people in that group chose options that offered a reward in a short time and with little effort.