Fact Tuesday: brains

Collette

By Collette on 24-Nov-09 17:18

It’s Fact Tuesday, where I ask colleagues to tell me their favourite science fact. Chad, our Workshop Coordinator, told me a bunch of neat stuff today about brains!

Did you know that glucose is the only thing our brain uses for energy? Glucose is obtained from carbohydrates, and carbohydrates can either be simple or complex. Complex carbohydrates are good -- they break down into glucose slowly, which is what our brains want to maintain a steady level of energy. So make sure you eat your beans, whole grains, and apples!

Simple carbohydrates are like an injection of glucose, and they are really bad for your brain. Your brain can't store glucose so it needs a steady supply. If you consume a simple carbohydrate, like a can of pop, your body releases a whole bunch of insulin which tells your cells to pull some of that glucose out of your bloodstream and store it for later on. Your body is saying "hey, there's too much glucose! Let's pack some up for later!" But, your brain can't store glucose, so your brain is then actually deprived of the energy it needs. And when your brain is low on energy, it's hard to think.

So really, pop and candy make you stupid. Really! You can read more about it here.

Another interesting topic that Chad told me was about people with a split brain. In the 1960s, there was no other cure for people who suffered from a special kind of epilepsy than by cutting off the connection, corpus callosum, between the two hemispheres. It actually didn't affect the person's personality much, but it had some interesting effects. These interesting effects lead to us knowing a lot more about how the two halves of the brain work together.

If you show a person with a split brain a picture in their left visual field (that is, the left half of what both eyes see), they will be unable to say out loud what they saw. This is because the speech-control center is in the left side of the brain in most people, and the image from the left visual field is sent only to the right side of the brain. Since communication between the two sides of the brain is stopped, the person cannot say out loud what the right side of the brain is seeing.

This part really fascinates me: while that person can't say out loud what they saw, they could draw it again. So, if they were shown a picture of an apple, they wouldn't be able to verbally tell you it's an apple. But, they could draw you a picture of it!

Stay curious,
Collette

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Science Explorer Lisa
Posts: 2
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Re:
Reply #2 on : Wed November 25, 2009, 22:05:05
If I'm recalling my biochem correctly, our body does use stored up glucose (glycogen) when we experience deficits but the fastest usable fuel is glucose in our bloodstream from the food we eat. So basically our body looks to use glucose first because it's the easiest and fastest. If the glucose in our blood is low we feel a deficit because our primary fuel is low. when this happens our body will then go to our glycogen stores and then fat stores but these take more time and energy to use. It's enough to keep us functioning but it's not as snazzy as glucose. A lot of it also has to do with insulin hormones and transporters and other fun stuff like that.
Science Explorer Karissa
Posts: 2
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Re:
Reply #1 on : Tue November 24, 2009, 19:47:36
I don't understand why, if your body is storing all that glucose for later, the body doesn't release some of that stored glucose when your brain starts to feel a deficit.

The brain should be telling the body "Hey, pass me some glucose please." And because the body just stored up a lot of glucose, it should be able to hand some over.

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