Can Human brain collect energy from alternate sources?
This question is three fold:
1) Is there a theory or scientific evidence for a possibility that human brain can collect or use energy other than what the normal human body provides it ( through cardiac/body glucose)
2) If so can brain utilize this energy?
3) Are there any living beings which exhibit this behavior?
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November 15th, 2009 at 9:33 am
The only other kind of non-biochemical energy the brain can "collect" is heat energy, which it cannot use other than to maintain a certain body temperature.
If there was another more useful source we’s notice a lot of consequences. First, we’d be very aware of that energy source – our survival depends on identifying energy sources so we would be very aware of them. Second, there would be a part of our brain that acts like a transducer – something that converts one form of energy to another. There is no part of the brain that acts like a transducer; every part has a direct or indirect neural connection to a part of the body. There are many more consequence of having an alternate energy source if you think more about it. I’ll leave you to it and move on.
Our brain consist of neurons, whichh are cells, and cells use a molecule called ATP (whose energy comes from sugar; the transducer is the mitochondria). Every cell in our body uses ATP as a major source of energy using its high energy phosphate bond to provide for neccessary checimal reactions.
So..
1) No successful theory, but I’m sure there must be some out there
2) since there is no obvious alternative energy source – no.
3) not as yet, there are some bacteria that manage to live on the ocean floor without oxygen and they have a different biochemistry than standard bacteria – they might be worth checking out. I think they are called thermobacillius or thermophilic bacteria.