The Brain Has a ‘Low-Power Mode’ That Blunts Our Senses | Quanta Magazine

The takeaway from all of these experiments is this: In the human brain less equals bad, worse, unproductive. More equals good, better, productive. Our scarcity brain defaults to more and rarely considers less. And when we do consider less, we often think it sucks.

The neurologist John Kounios observes8 that the brain finds ways to “reduce our mental workload,” and one way is to accept without question (or even to just ignore) much of what is going on around us at any time.

Melanie Boly, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is painstakingly collecting EEG data from long-term Buddhist meditators during a state known as pure presence, an experience with no self, no discursive thoughts, and no perceptual content except for a luminous expanse, an empty mirror. Att

Carhart-Harris’s working hypothesis was that their brains would exhibit increases in activity, particularly in the emotion centers. “I thought it would look like the dreaming brain,” he told me. Employing a different scanning technology, Franz Vollenweider had published data indicating that psychedelics stimulated brain activity, especially in the

your brain has a limited pool of energy, and once that reserve is depleted, so too are your focus and productivity.