The fatigue that comes from performing demanding mental tasks may stem from a buildup of the neurotransmitter glutamate, according to research published today (August 11) in Current Biology.
Mental fatigue also appears to shift decision-making toward a kind of easy-button mode where the brain favors low-cost, immediate-reward options, says Antonius Wiehler, a study coauthor and cognitive neuroscientist at the Paris Brain Institute’s Motivation, Brain, and Behavior Lab. “So after a day of work, you [make] different choices compared to when you’re fresh in the morning,” he says. “We believe that this is [due to] glutamate accumulation.”
Matthew Apps, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Birmingham in the UK who was not involved in the research but who peer-reviewed the paper for the journal, says the research has identified a potential marker of fatigue to study more widely in athletes or in people with disorders such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue ...
