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Brain Low-Power Mode Cuts Synaptic Energy Use
- The brain can enter a low-power mode that reduces synaptic ATP use by about 29 percent.
- In food-restricted mice losing 15–20% body weight, visual-cortex neurons used less ATP and processed signals less precisely.
Hunger Shifts Visual Attention Toward Food Cues
- Short-term hunger biases attention toward food-related cues, increasing visual cortex responses to food images.
- Burgess showed hungry mice had stronger cortical responses to food-associated images that decreased after eating.
Fly Study Predicted Energy-Saving Neural Switches
- In flies, starvation shuts down an energy-costly long-term memory pathway, and forcing it on hastened death.
- This prior finding motivated searches for analogous mammalian energy-saving mechanisms.