ArticleScientific reports2017
A trade-off between cognitive and physical performance, with relative preservation of brain function.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Neurovascular-metabolic dysregulation, metabolic connectomics, and metabolic functional changes in Alzheimer's disease: A preclinical and clinical comparison.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- The effect of an 8-week mental training program on ITN test performances of tennis players.BMC sports science, medicine & rehabilitation · 2025Article
- Neurometabolic and vascular dysfunction as an early diagnostic for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- Testing the expensive-tissue hypothesis' prediction of inter-tissue competition using causal modelling with latent variables.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Identification and reduction of retained primitive reflexes by sensory stimulation in autism spectrum disorder: effects on qEEG networks and cognitive functions.BMJ case reports · 2023Article
- Human and chimpanzee shared and divergent neurobiological systems for general and specific cognitive brain functions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Mutual interference between memory encoding and motor skills: the influence of motor expertise.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- In vitro- and in vivo-produced male dairy calves show molecular differences in the hepatic and muscular energy regulation†.Biology of reproduction · 2022Article
- Retained Primitive Reflexes and Potential for Intervention in Autistic Spectrum Disorders.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Review
- Cerebrum, liver, and muscle regulatory networks uncover maternal nutrition effects in developmental programming of beef cattle during early pregnancy.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Energetics as a driver of human morphological thermal adaptation; evidence from female ultra-endurance athletes.Evolutionary human sciences · 2021Article
- Human athletic paleobiology; using sport as a model to investigate human evolutionary adaptation.American journal of physical anthropology · 2020Review
- Ultra-endurance athletic performance suggests that energetics drive human morphological thermal adaptation.Evolutionary human sciences · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Debate surrounds the issue of how the large, metabolically expensive brains of Homo sapiens can be energetically afforded. At the evolutionary level, decreased investment in muscularity, adiposity and the digestive tract allow for a larger brain. Developmentally, high neo-natal adiposity and preferential distribution of resources to the brain provide an energetic buffer during times of environmental stress. Through an experimental design, we investigated the hypothesis of a trade-off involving brain and muscle at the acute level in humans. Mental performance was measured by a free-recall test, and physical performance by power output on an indoor rowing ergometer. Sixty-two male student rowers performed the two tests in isolation, and then again simultaneously. Paired samples t-tests revealed that both power output and mental performance reduced when tested together compared to in isolation (t(61) = 9.699, p < 0.001 and t(61) = 8.975, p < 0.001). Furthermore, the decrease in physical performance was greater than the decrease in mental performance (t(61) = -2.069, p = 0.043). This is the first investigation to demonstrate an acute level trade-off between these two functions, and provides support for the selfish brain hypothesis due to the relative preservation of cognitive function over physical power output. The underlying mechanism is unclear, and requires further work.
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