Cognitive cost as dynamic allocation of energetic resources

@article{Christie2015CognitiveCA,
  title={Cognitive cost as dynamic allocation of energetic resources},
  author={S. Thomas Christie and Paul Schrater},
  journal={Frontiers in Neuroscience},
  year={2015},
  volume={9}
}
While it is widely recognized that thinking is somehow costly, involving cognitive effort and producing mental fatigue, these costs have alternatively been assumed to exist, treated as the brain's assessment of lost opportunities, or suggested to be metabolic but with implausible biological bases. We present a model of cognitive cost based on the novel idea that the brain senses and plans for longer-term allocation of metabolic resources by purposively conserving brain activity. We identify… 
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